An update on my leaking boiler
People have been anxiously awaiting an update on my Traeger TPB-150 corn/pellet boiler. But, I don't have a lot of information yet. It goes back to the old saying, "You can have Good, Quick & Cheap, pick two" Well, I am going for Good and Cheap, so it is going to take a while before I get it back. I was happy with this because I wasn't sure how much the gas boiler installation last week was going to cost me. I needed to stay liquid in case there were big surprises. There weren't really, so now if we can just get through Christmas with nothing else breaking...The last article was about the disassembly process. But what then? I had to do a bunch of calling around to find a company who was interested in repairing. And, one who would work on a small budget like I had. First off, I had to get it cleaned before anyone could evaluate it. Boiler shops were willing to take it in, but for the most part they farm out the cleaning process and mark it up big. So, following a suggesting of someone here, I tried calling auto body shops because they usually have a sand blaster. I got lucky on my second call. The guy there was willing to sand blast it for $50 if I could wait until the next sunny day. He does his sandblasting outside (That is the point where I plug my ears and say "lalalala". Hopefully he doesn't have any close silicosis breathing neighbors)
Finally a sunny day hit and the pictures here are after I got it sand blasted. Unfortunately the guy who I had do the sandblasting thought his blaster nozzle would go down the boiler tubes. Sadly, it was about an eight of an inch too big, so it wouldn't fit. So, he was not able to clean inside the tubes very well at all. He was able to clean the top and the bottom of the boiler well enough so we can see mine is one of the early generation of Traegers with welded rather than rolled boiler tubes.
Welded tubes like I have though are a whole different deal. Much more work to remove the tube. Much more work to get the end caps ready for new tubes. Much more work to perfectly weld in the new tubes. More work means more money. A boiler repair place was quoting two hundred dollars "shop fee" then on top of that, six hundred dollars for the first tube, another three hundred dollars for each tube after that, plus inspection. No guarantee at all once it left their shop, if another tube began leaking tomorrow it all started over.
So, just underneath the horizon there is another group of shops that take work in, not exactly under the table, but on a friend of a friend basis. In my case, my wife is friends with a woman, who's husband knows a guy, who takes in boiler repair work. Lets call them TNA Mechanical. A welding, plumbing and heating shop. They initially quoted the party line. But then, after some assurances I understood the risks, they were willing to talk about doing repair with no inspections, and of course no guarantee. It takes lots of calling around and talking to people to find these places. I think there is also a great deal of luck and chance involved. I just happened to get lucky and found such a place within ten miles of my house. There the boiler sits today. I haven't talked to them about it. I have been concentrating my time and energy into getting the gas boiler purchased and installed. At this point, with the new gas boiler in place, I really would mind if they waited until spring to fix it.
You can see on the boiler tubes the level of corrosion taken place. I really blame myself for this. Even back shortly after I got this burner I felt like the cleaning brush they included was insufficient to clean the corn residue. I should have gotten around to buying some scraper such as was suggested by Sting, the primary Traeger supporter here on this forum. I think I could have kept the tubes much cleaner. And, I think I wouldn't be having these problems now. Instead, I procrastinated and never got around to buying a stiffer brush and scraper.
But, as much as I have figured out right from wrong, I think this is all symptomatic of what happened a few years ago. Natural gas prices were way up, pellets were a little cheaper than they are now, but corn was selling for $1.43 a bushel, just a bit over $50 a ton. Suddenly all the manufacturers were branding their equipment as a corn burning appliance. I think thats what happened in this case. Traeger had a pretty good pellet burner, but they wanted to jump on the corn burning wagon.
Once I do get a price for the repair, then I thought the next step would be to check with Traeger and see what a new one would cost. I think the entire PB-150 is about four thousand. How much would you guess just the boiler tank would cost?
And another thing I have thought about, just to extend this whole thought of emergency backup. I would like to change over the Traeger boiler to a 12 volt system. So, 12 volt motors, and maybe some sort of power inverter for the logic board if it couldn't be easily converted. Jason, my neighbor down the street has done the conversion on his LDJ. So, if the power goes out, he could switch over and still heat his house using batteries. I have heard maybe it won't be as easy of change over on the Traeger, so if you have any opinions, post them below.
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