Not long ago, in a boiler room not too far away, a safety valve began to leak. Most days you wouldn’t notice it, but if you walked by just at the right moment, you’d catch a glimpse of steam escaping from the body.
After a few months of this, I’d had enough. We have a second steam test stand, and we obviously know how to repair a safety valve, so we took a couple of hours of downtime to repair and recertify it.
Here’s the thing: why was our safety valve leaking in the first place? We don’t run our test boilers close to the valve’s set pressure. We know better. Our water chemistry is consistently monitored and correct, so corrosion shouldn’t have been attacking the seats. What was going on? That valve shouldn’t have started leaking. Safety valves don’t fail without a reason.
Turns out there was plenty going on, and honestly, I only understood about half of it at first. After eight years in our “new” building (not so new anymore) and running the boilers every weekday, we discovered an issue in another part of the steam system and it caught up with us. A small steam cut had started to form in the valve seat. Luckily, we caught it before significant damage was done, and standard machining restored the safety valve.
The safety valve was a clue and warning that there was another issue going on in the system.
Moral of the story (and opportunity for you): Check that your customers are staying on top of routine maintenance across the entire steam system, not just the boiler or the safety valve. They’ll thank you in the long run. And when a customer brings in a leaking valve, it’s the perfect opportunity to talk through their system and maintenance practices. You might uncover a gold mine of underlying issues you can help solve, fixing the real problems and earning additional business by being the hero who prevents the next failure.
As always, thank you for your business. We’re here to make your job easier whenever you need safety valves or support.
Have a wonderful fall and holiday season!
Andrea Tanis
