Boiler Leaking Water

Water running under a boiler sitting on an old fieldstone basement floor gets worse quietly, so call and describe where the drip starts.

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When this becomes an emergency

Water is spreading across the basement slab under the boiler and soaking into stored boxes.
The gauge needle sits higher than its usual mark and keeps creeping up through the day.
A steady trickle comes off the relief valve piping instead of an occasional spit.
Flaky orange scale has started building on the cast iron sections or the near-boiler piping.

What a pro does

Most boiler leaks start somewhere other than the boiler. In houses that have been heated for a hundred winters, the water usually traces back to a tired relief valve, a circulator seal that's given up, or a threaded fitting that corroded from the inside out, and a tech follows the wet trail upward to its origin before pulling a single part. Pressure that keeps shoving the relief valve open points at an expansion tank that has filled with water and lost its air cushion. That's a tank problem wearing a valve costume. Killing power at the switch and closing the feed line is the sensible holding move.

Frequently asked questions

Can a boiler leak be left alone until the weather breaks?

Waiting is rough on it. Water sitting against cast iron and near-boiler piping keeps eating metal every hour, and a slow weep in the fall is often a section failure by midwinter.

Why is there water only when the heat runs?

Heat raises system pressure, so a fitting or seal that holds at rest can open up once the boiler comes up to temperature and closes again as it cools.

Does a wet basement floor always mean the boiler is finished?

Often it doesn't. A valve or a pump or a leaking fitting is serviceable, and a leak coming from one of those is a very different repair from a cracked section.

What should happen before anyone arrives?

Shutting off power to the unit and the water feed keeps the leak from being fed, and moving anything stored nearby out of the puddle saves a second problem later.

Boiler Leaking Water?

Get connected with a local pro now.

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