seeping cast iron water furnace

However I have an old cast iron Crane wood burner plumbed in with it, and there is water oozing out of a 1" area on the top front of the water jacket.

This is all fairly low pressure, 14# is what I should run I believe, no more than 20#.

Anything I can do, or is it done & over? I'll figure welding is out, but any of the JB type products work, or not worth trying - pressure & heat too much. Welding doesn't sound good, thin jacket, I can't weld, heat & expansion....

Kinda bummed, was laying in more wood with the price of fuel going up, & now this. Any good water jacket furnace models out there????

--->Paul

I've been thinking about your leak. If you make any temp repair then one day when you awake your livingroom will be flooded.

How about trading labor with a known good weldor in your area? You would then be pretty assured it's going to last awhile. Epoxy seals well from the pressure side but poor from the structual side or seals best from the inside.

The weep is probably on a elbow or close to a change in water direction and if thats true then most likely theres a larger area that needs repaired that you can't see.

Since it's a low pressure system, simular too a engine radaitor, then a repair might last awhile.

Gas welding works best as it also stress relieves the base metal as it's welded.

T_Bone

This is a cast iron water jacket. The weeping crack is on the top front outside of the furnace. It would be above the heat chamber (smoke chamber?). The furnace has the fire chamber, smoke goes up the rear, horizontally to the front, up again, and horizontally back to the chimney again. All of these parts are water jacketed, the funace is in seperate vertical sections, held together with long bolts - like an old cast radiator. The crack is in the section that is the front, with the doors & all. This is a rather large furnace - it can hold 27" wood, 9" across. A friend of mine joking suggested _taking_ the furnace to a weld shop! :)

Anyhow, how fragil is a water jacket to weld on? Not going to fit this piece in an oven to heat. :) I would think the uneven heating of a welder would just shatter the whole shell, and difficult (impossible?) to heat all sides of this.

Seems like welding would induce more cracking, but I'm not a metal guy.

--->Paul

Good Luck,
Dusty

A catastrophic failure of any repair job could compromise any insurance coverage.. LIABILITY...

bummer!!!

I bet your system is no higher than 14psi, getting rid of all those worries.

I would be concerned about the integerity of the entire "Old cast iron Crane wood burning system". If it is truely old they over designed for safety and longivity of systems. Any leakage could be indicative of future system failure. Is it water chemistry or end of expected full life of the boiler. Will component replacement correct the furnance for future generations to come?

Can you isolate and by pass this unit for repair, if the patch does fail in the middle of a cold snap?

Your furnance your call.

ATW/WA

It is outside, top front of the furnace, a 1" weeping crack. No evidence of it ever before, when I fired up the oil burner (which heats up the water in the wood burner as well) suddenly it was damp or seeping there on the wood burner, stays that way when cold.

My concern also is long term, what is the condition of the whole unit? Dad got it used 30 years ago, nice wood furnace, but how old, how beat up? We run cistern water (roof collected) in it.

The oil burner has a pump, but the wood furnace is self circulating.

While the valves are very old, 4 of the big fellas will isolate the wood furnace.

I will talk to my furnace guy, but figure on trying an epoxy for this year maybe. See how it goes anyhow. Won't be able to find as good a unit a unit again!

--->Paul

Planning a trip down our way soon? I have a surplus wood fired boiler that turned out to be too large for my use. Takes 4' logs.

There are several companies that make them, just fatten your wallet. Easy to spend $5k uninstalled.

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