Woke up this morning with a flood in the garage - ice dam in the driveway, frozen culvert. Big pain, but I can deal with it.
Then, noticed a couple of odd things. I could hear water circulating in the baseboards. That's not right....
Checked system. Built a nice fire last night, so we should have plenty of heat in storage so that we can skip a fire today. Storage is less than half what it should be. Not good.
Looked at system pressure. It's a bit under 10psi. That's low. I turned off the makeup water valve and the pressure dropped to zero. Definitely not good. Has to be a pretty good leak somewhere. I make a quick tour of the house and basement - no water anywhere in the house. Where the heck could it have gone?
Must be that the HX in storage let go. That's outside, so any overflow would run out the bottom of the storage enclosure and onto the ground. I check the sightglass - storage water level is 3/4" from top, just where it should be.
I close off both ends of all the zones and pressurize the system - pressure holds. Boilers are OK.
With the supply side of each zone closed, I open the return end of one zone at a time and listen for water. The hot tub zone is the culprit. The hot tub is currently drained due to a leak, so that zone hasn't been used in months. I go out and open the hot tub cover. There's my missing boiler water. The hot tub is full and right at 103 degrees. We decided not to use it, though ;-)
Apparently the coil in the hot tub HX sprung a leak, and 550 gallons of makeup water (at 55 degrees) got heated on their way through the storage HX and ended up in the hot tub.
![Bad day at chez nofossil Bad day at chez nofossil](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/128/128197-ceda8377db04866eb2c63102522ba532.jpg)
Then, noticed a couple of odd things. I could hear water circulating in the baseboards. That's not right....
Checked system. Built a nice fire last night, so we should have plenty of heat in storage so that we can skip a fire today. Storage is less than half what it should be. Not good.
Looked at system pressure. It's a bit under 10psi. That's low. I turned off the makeup water valve and the pressure dropped to zero. Definitely not good. Has to be a pretty good leak somewhere. I make a quick tour of the house and basement - no water anywhere in the house. Where the heck could it have gone?
Must be that the HX in storage let go. That's outside, so any overflow would run out the bottom of the storage enclosure and onto the ground. I check the sightglass - storage water level is 3/4" from top, just where it should be.
I close off both ends of all the zones and pressurize the system - pressure holds. Boilers are OK.
With the supply side of each zone closed, I open the return end of one zone at a time and listen for water. The hot tub zone is the culprit. The hot tub is currently drained due to a leak, so that zone hasn't been used in months. I go out and open the hot tub cover. There's my missing boiler water. The hot tub is full and right at 103 degrees. We decided not to use it, though ;-)
Apparently the coil in the hot tub HX sprung a leak, and 550 gallons of makeup water (at 55 degrees) got heated on their way through the storage HX and ended up in the hot tub.
![Bad day at chez nofossil Bad day at chez nofossil](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/128/128197-ceda8377db04866eb2c63102522ba532.jpg)