I voted for Kamala Harris.
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Stephen Checkoway
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Associate Professor of Computer Science at Oberlin College.
“But Steve,” I hear you say, “Ball valves have an obvious indication of whether they’re open or closed. Parallel to the pipe is open. Perpendicular to the pipe is closed. How could you possibly get that wrong?”
To which I say, “good point, imaginary critic in my head.”
Except no. At 4:19, the water sensor goes off. Back to the boiler room and the relief valve on the boiler is gushing water at top speed.
Our old fill unit stoped working (it would never close once the low water cut off called for water). This was a nightmare. The boiler filled completely while running. This caused disgusting (and acidic!) water to come out of the steam release valves. That was _no fun_ but not the point of the story.
But this isn’t the only way to add water to the boiler. There’s a manual bypass controlled by a ball valve.
I was told the low water cut off is really just a float sensor which is kinda neat.
In addition to stopping the boiler (possibly by turning off the gas; I didn’t look at the circuit diagram too closely and now the boiler is running and it’s very hot so I don’t want to open it up right now), it commands the fill unit to add water when it is low.
However, if steam is released from the radiators, over time, the water level will drop. If it gets too low, the boiler can explode (or so I’ve been told). So this is monitored by the low-water cut off. You can see the gauge glass to the right which gives a visual indication of the water level in the boiler.
As you’d expect, the boiler boils water by burning gas. (It’s hard to get a photo of the fire.) It’s a (normally) closed system. The water boils, steam is generated and goes through those large pipes covered in white material (the white stuff is asbestos encapsulation). The steam condenses back to water and then runs back down the same pipe into the boiler. No water is lost in ordinary operation.
Let’s start at the beginning. My house is heated by steam radiators. In my basement sits this boiler.