5 Tips For Smart Boiler Maintenance
Odds are, your boiler is the most expensive piece of equipment you own. That’s why it’s so critical that you take good care of it. Not only do you need your boiler to keep running for many years, but you need it to run safely and efficiently during that time. If you don’t take good care of your boiler, problems are more likely to surface, and those problems aren’t likely to be cheap to fix. To keep your boiler running properly over the long haul, here are some tips for smart boiler maintenance.
Tip 1: Keep the boiler’s interior clean
An annual cleaning of the inside of your boiler can go a long way. As little as one-tenth of an inch of scale and other types of residue can reduce heat transfer and make the boiler work harder and use up more fuel. Whether it’s with a brush or chemicals, it’s important to clean the inside of your boiler at least once a year.
Tip 2: Check insulation
Every inch of surface area on your boiler is a place where heat can escape if you don’t have proper insulation. If you suspect a problem with your boiler’s efficiency, it could be caused by poor insulation, which is why it’s important to check your boiler’s insulation regularly.
Tip 3: Monitor water quality
In a way, a boiler is only as useful as the quality of the water inside it. If you don’t monitor water quality closely, it’s possible for the water to become hard and lead to scaling. Checking water quality can be time-consuming, so consider getting a device like Miura’s colormetry hardness detector that can monitor water hardness automatically. This will help you address hard water before it becomes a problem.
Tip 4: Keep an accurate operations log
It may seem monotonous, but keeping a log of boiler operations is the best way to monitor for potential problems. Keeping a record of water temperature, gas temperature, pressure, fuel consumption, and other important factors will let you know if there’s a minor issue that needs to be addressed before it becomes a more serious problem.
Tip 5: Stay on schedule with inspections
There’s nothing more important for the safety and efficiency of your boiler than keeping up to date on routine inspections. It may be an inconvenience to shut down the boiler for an inspection, but it’s worthwhile if it means ensuring that your boiler is running properly. Of course, with Miura’s modular boilers, a full inspection only takes half a day, and if you’re using several smaller boilers to run your operations, only one will need to be shut down at a time, so the inconvenience will be minimal.