At 10:14 AM 2/26/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Harry,
>It is all too easy to have a meltdown on a Gauge 1 silver-soldered boiler
>when the water gets low.
Peter,
As usual we disagree. In the case of the K4 boiler, the usual
generalities won't do. The problems were due in part to a manufacturing
defect where in the production process jigging, pre-fluxing, and
pre-soldering were used, too little or no silver solder reached a critical
joint at the conflux of the fire tubes and the combustion chamber which
also was the point in the boiler where the most heat from the flame would
be concentrated.
It has never been concluded, at least to my satisfaction (if in the
grand scheme of things it mattered) whether the copper failed, or the
solder failed, or a combination of the two. But either way it would not
simply be a matter of solder failure as there were several contributing
factors in design and manufacture, the lack of any one of which would have
made the outcome entirely different, so this could certainly not be
considered a straight "meltdown" in the general sense we've been speaking of.
Regards,
Harry
