HELLO THERE baymee, I know this post is a year old, but I need to know about the expansion tank, and how much pressure it should have. I have a 20 year old WEIL-McLAIN VHE gas fired boiler. It has 2 zone valves, and controls 2 levels. There is one AIR-BLEED valve on top of the boiler to purge air out. I have plenty of water "sloshing" in the radiators even after bleeding the boiler of air. This "Extrol tank" has never been checked for anything. TO ALL OUT THERE ... PLEASE FORWARD Any information that will be usefull in Solving this AIR Problem. THANK - YOU, JIM.

Thanks for the suggestion. I took a quick look, and they don't allow any discussion of pricing. It might still be a good information source for my other questions, although I generally try to avoid sites that try to match up consumers with contractors who pay for this service. Also, I don't want to register at yet another site just to post a question. What I like about this site (That Home Site!) is that you can usually get some first-hand info from other homeowners in similar circumstances as well as from professionals who aren't competing for your business.

The tech came yesterday and it seems all has been fixed. We did once again have some sludge build-up on the nozzle so he changed out the nozzle and another (oil) strainer that he said looked like it had not been changed in awhile. As mentioned, he changed the nozzle and put in a "W" nozzle. He said the "W" will work better if we continue to encounter the sludge issue. He changed two electrodes whose points seemed to have flattened a bit, changed the furnace fan setting and the filters/strainers. I have to say that even before the shuttering of the boiler last week, we still heard the boiler kick on, but not as loud...now we cannot even hear it kick on. The boiler seems to shut off sooner, but the forced air seems to stay on with warm air longer. Seems efficiency has been tended to here. Looking for feedback on the following suggestions though.... 1) he said the furnace fan was set at 200, so he turned it down to 180. He said anything higher than 180 just creates steam and at 180 it will be more efficient. When we first moved in 6 years ago, we had complained that the forced air seemed to be "cold" after the boiler shut off, so that is why it was set to 200...I think. Opinions on what is the most efficient furnace fan temp setting? 2) he suggest we upgrade our filter to something slightly larger since we continue to have the sludge problem even after getting about 35 gallons sucked out in late July. The last time we we had the furnace serviced with changing nozzle and filters was 7/30/08, so we did not even get 6months our of it this time. 3) he suggests we put a diesel conditioner or STR-2 in the tank next time we get oil delivered to try to break down some of the sludge. He did say that we should not add it too often since it can errode the tank. I have read the same thing. I did find a company FuelRight, although I do not think they sell direct to consumers, that had a "study" that they performed on the different oil additives (See Link). This is the one thing I am unsure of here, so ANY suggestions on an oil additive would be helpful. The tech said we should get a minimum of 20 years out of our boiler as long as it is maintained properly. Seems we made the right move by bringing in a new company/tech and will stick with him in the future. We are extremely happy with the work he performed. Thanks again for all of your help. Here is a link that might be useful: Additive

Hard one to diagnose from online. Some boilers have the burners cycle with the thermostat, others keep the boiler hot and cycle the circulator. If the pump runs constantly, the burners should cycle with the thermostat or the house will be an oven. Could be a bad stat, short in the stat wire, stuck gas valve. Or if the burners shut off when the stat is turned down, then I'm not sure what is the problem. Is the house hot or cold? If cold, could be a broken spring coupling in the pump but the boiler would be off much of the time though still hot.