Could a Small Issue Be Quietly Developing Inside Your System Right Now?
From the Hydronix Preventive Maintenance series
This is magnetite, a thick black iron-oxide sludge found packed inside a radiant heating component.
About a year after the homeowners purchased this house, the radiant heating system appeared to be working normally.
Nothing was leaking. The boiler came on. The floors got warm.
Then, one day, they didn’t.
The black sludge in the photo was packed into a space where water was supposed to move. For years, corrosion had been quietly eating away at the metal components from the inside, like a cancer growing undetected while everything on the outside still appeared normal.
The source of the problem ran beneath the floors throughout the entire house.
Standard PEX commonly used for hot and cold plumbing water had been installed for all of the radiant heating loops instead of oxygen-barrier PEX designed for closed-loop hydronic heating systems.
Both types of tubing can carry hot water. The difference is that hydronic heating PEX includes an additional barrier that helps prevent oxygen from passing through the tubing wall. It is also more expensive.
Standard plumbing PEX is not defective. It was simply the wrong product for a heating system connected directly to components that could corrode.
Over time, oxygen passing through the tubing fed corrosion inside the system. The resulting magnetite circulated with the water and accumulated inside circulators, valves, strainers, heat exchangers, and other small passages.
By the time the heat stopped, the damage was done. For the original system, it was a terminal diagnosis.
A completely new heating system had to be designed around the non-barrier tubing already installed throughout the house so the new equipment would be protected from the same oxygen-related corrosion.
Regular maintenance cannot change tubing buried throughout a home, but it can reveal corrosion, contaminated system fluid, and developing component damage before the system quits.
If you have a boiler, radiant heating, or snowmelt system, give Hydronix Mechanical a call.
We can take a look and see whether your system is keeping any expensive little secrets of its own. Click below to submit a request for service
or you can call or text us at (970) 930-1488 or email info@hydronixmechanical.com.
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