The old boiler at the Cedar Rapids plant had a 3-inch thick layer of scale inside

We were doing the teardown for the replacement job last Tuesday, and when we finally got the access plate off, it looked like a cave made of rock. The foreman, Pete, just stared at it and said, 'That's not scale, that's a geology project.' I looked it up later in the maintenance logs, and the thing hadn't been properly cleaned out in over 15 years. The water treatment must have been non-existent. I've seen some buildup, but never a solid three inches. Anyone else run into a fossilized boiler like that? What's the worst buildup you've ever had to chip out?

2 comments

2 Comments

sage_rodriguez6d ago

What did the water hardness tests show back when they first skipped the cleaning?

benbrown6d ago

Yeah, water hardness tests. Bet they were off the charts. They probably just ignored the results until the boiler turned into a solid block of minerals.