Carl Knight, managing director for Fulton Ltd, discusses why the regular maintenance and servicing of a steam boiler is so important.
In short, regular servicing and maintenance is essential to maintain the optimum operating efficiency and safety of boiler facilities; and ensure their long-term reliability.
However, a key issue that is often overlooked are the consequences of a boiler not being available due to maintenance or breakdown. Like any piece of equipment, a steam boiler will be more reliable when serviced on a regular basis and, fortunately, a minimum level of annual maintenance is needed due to the legal requirement of having the need to have your boiler inspected on an annual basis. Hopefully, this opportunity can also be used to undertake all routine service tasks, but it should be borne in mind that, depending on the level of use, a boiler may require more frequent maintenance and service inspections.
An easily overlooked yet important aspect of operating a steam boiler is the need to ensure good water quality. This, at minimum, requires a water softener and regular checks on its performance. Just 1mm of scale inside a boiler will increase your fuel bill by 7-10% due to the poor thermal conductivity of scale deposits. Unfortunately, scale will accumulate on the hottest parts of a boiler, so these parts will gain the thickest layer of scale, leading to localised overheating and permanent damage to the boiler.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that regular boiler blowdown will remove scale either, because it will not! Blowdown will discharge loose particles and sludge, but cannot detach scale from inside the boiler. Of course, only servicing the boiler once a year may mean that scale accumulation will not be realised until it is too late, but regular servicing will pick up evidence of scale and enable you to remedy the situation before it is too late.
As well as a design and build service – and as a safeguard to end-users – many boiler manufacturers should be capable of managing the installation and commissioning of its boiler facilities and systems, and provide regular servicing and maintenance contracts and training. Adequate after-sales support should also be available to customers, and should be backed up by service technicians and/or service contractors offering services on either a national or international basis.
To ensure that boilers are correctly maintained and serviced, especially for sites operating a number of boilers, companies should also consider training courses for its service engineers and boiler operatives. Training also proves invaluable to employers, as operators handle more of their own maintenance and repair and avoid call-outs to ‘boiler breakdowns’ that require no more than the simple flick of a switch to resolve. Real examples like this prove that operator courses could potentially save the cost of many expensive and unwanted visits by engineers.
Hands-on training should be available on-site or at a training facility and should include all aspects of service, including product information, day-to-day operation, servicing and maintenance, and be structured to the needs of the individual and to those of the company.
For example, if a boiler is to be serviced by a dedicated service organisation, its engineers can be trained. However if it is owner-maintained, and as no two boiler facilities are the same, some manufacturers may prefer to run courses at customers’ own facilities so that the customers’ technicians and engineers learn to maintain and service the equipment they will be monitoring on a day-to-day basis.
Summing up, Carl Knight explains; “Like any piece of equipment, steam boilers will be more reliable when serviced on a regular basis and with properly managed maintenance and servicing, should give excellent service for many years. Even water quality, the most common cause of nuisance failures on steam boilers, should not be a problem. But please do not forget that for gas boilers, a recognised and qualified service organisation with Gas Safe and ACOPS approval is essential.”