What a treat it was to see this 1908 boiler in Wheat Ridge! As a “Red Tagged” unit, it needed to be replaced, but the history on these old boilers is incredible!
Boilers from that time frame were built to last! They came in steam and gravity hot water. The coal for most had to be hand loaded in the boiler and was very messy. In the 1930s natural gas came to Denver metro and these boilers were converted with gas burners. I’ve also seen some that were first converted to burn oil rather than natural gas. These boilers originally had to be fed water manually and if not done was very dangerous. As time went on and real estate changed hands, instructions on how to operate and service was not transferred to new home owners and bad things would happen with them. This boiler was originally a gravity hot water boiler and did not use electricity. It had what was called a pilot generator that generated millivolt to function the gas valve. Sometime somebody added a pump to the system which made it a circulated hot water boiler making it more efficient heating the radiators faster than gravity.
This unit became too dangerous to operate and was red tagged due to the pressure relief valve. When that does not operate properly, excessive pressure cracked the water jacket of the boiler.
