Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to Boiler Wild. My name is Eric Johnson on this podcast. I'd like to talk about Boilers and personal development topics. Both of them go hand in hand. Boiler Wild is the name of the podcast as you hopefully already know if you are listening to this, but wild is an acronym. It stands for work hard, invest in yourself, lead others and develop yourself into a person of excellence. All about.
personal development and excellence and excellence runs throughout our entire life. So if you are married, it is being kind and respectful to your spouse and taking responsibility for your responsibilities, which seems to be a lost art in 2025 and at work. The same is true. Being kind and respectful to your coworkers and being responsible.
for your responsibilities and making problems your problem. And that is, I think it seems to be a theme people like to push problems around or complain about problems, but push problems around and not actually solve them. And we need more problem solvers and less people creating problems. But.
What I want to talk about today is a seemingly dry topic. is seemingly narrow, very narrow topic, but it is just kind of something I saw yesterday and it brought up a memory and I think you should know about it. And yes, so it would be better if this was a video podcast and I could put the video together, but.
What I will describe, can easily look up online. You can also basically find it in a lot of boiler rooms. So what I want to talk about is the Cleaver Brooks integral burner. And this is probably the most well-known popular boiler design. So if you are unfamiliar, what a Cleaver Brooks integral burner is, is
It is a fire tube boiler and it is a dry back. So the rear of the boiler is a big door of refractory and the front doesn't have a gun style or jet style burner. The burner is part of the front door and depending on the year and model of your Cleaver Brooks boiler,
the front door will look differently. The design came out around the 50s or 60s, I believe, and has evolved into different designs, but they all generally look the same. And if you were to open it up, the older designs have an inner door. The newer design doesn't have the inner door, but the point is it is a
confusing boiler to a lot of people because they are typically told that you have a boiler, which let's just say like that's the pressure vessel. I have the boiler and then I had the burner. And in this case, it is an entirely packaged boiler assembly and the Cleaver Brooks integral burner is part of the boiler and you can't like
remove the burner without major modifications to the front door. Like if you, and this is topic for another day, but there are people who replace this burner and they will change the entire design of the front of the boiler. It is different than a gun style or jet style burner where you just unbolt the burner, remove the burner tile and put it in a different burner tile.
and bolt up another burner like some other boiler designs out there. There are more common and popular across other manufacturers, but the Cleaver-Brooks Integral Burner is, Cleaver-Brooks is the only one who makes it. They got all the patents and designs on it and you're not gonna find another manufacturer that has that, because that's their design and it is unique to Cleaver-Brooks. But I wanted to talk about
⁓ specific part that is often overlooked and it is very easy to overlook it but it is the airline and when I say airline I will explain where the air is coming from but it is not like a compressed airline but the airline goes from the front of the boiler and is attached to the front door in it
snakes along the frame of the bottom of the boiler and it enters the rear door of the boiler at the bottom of the sight glass. And the airline is used to blow air into the rear sight glass. So where you would view the flame of the boiler, it blows air in there and it keeps the sight glass from overheating.
if you remove the airline or do not connect it after you close the boiler from opening up the doors and you fire the boiler after about an hour or two, the rear sight glass, the paint will start bubbling and it'll get super hot and it'll eventually get cherry red and crack and melt the metal. Ask me how I know. But it is
very very important and this all stems from this memory that I got stems from is a Facebook post the wonderful platform of Facebook and as we all know there are lots of people who like to pretend they know everything and have an opinion on everything and a lot of people just write it off as ⁓ that's just the internet and
you that, you just dismiss it. Well, I know for a fact that this happens in everyday life because I've experienced it and was one of the hardest things for me when learning about boilers and steam was when people who should know better, like, hey, I've been working at this for 20 or 30 years. They tell you something.
and then you find out that it's not true, but they told you with like absolute certainty that it's true. Or you talk to like another contractor, you I was a, if you are not familiar, I was a service technician for a boiler service company, but I would talk to other contractors at, you know, a job site.
and they would like, like it needs to be like this and this. And I would be like, yeah, we're definitely not doing that. That's not what it is. But it's just people talking about a topic that they are uninformed on. And it's not to say that you have to be an expert on everything. But if you are giving advice or telling somebody how to do something and you are just making up the answer or you have an overconfidence,
in the answer you are giving and you you say this is absolutely certain and it's not like like it's like a black and white advice not this like like what do think I should do in this situation and you say well I'm not really sure all the particulars but this is kind of how I would go about it that's a little bit different than somebody asking a very factual black and white
advice and in this Facebook post a person it was a Facebook post in a group that should hopefully be semi educated people about boilers and this person is obviously newer and they asked what a fitting was that connected the airline to the front door of the Cleaver Brooks
And if you are unaware, I will talk about what this video is. So the airline is
typically is half inch EMT. EMT, if you are not familiar, is typically used for electrical running wires and is probably the most basic form of putting conduit. EMT is what conduit is, know, the trade name essentially of EMT is conduit.
you just bend up some conduit on the wall, put it into a light box, and turn on a light switch. And that can throw some people off because they're not used to seeing conduit used for something that's not electrical. And that's kinda what stems this whole Facebook post. Now, if you have been around Cleaver Brooks integral burners and this design, you know exactly what I am talking about. And this Facebook post,
It brought up a memory that I have. So I learned boilers not by just going to tons and tons of classes, but mostly on the job, work experience and seeing stuff and then going home at night and reading all the manuals and stuff.
I was uncertain as to what the fitting was and since it is a electrical type fitting and the conduit, the EMT for the airline is electrical, it's not something that you typically first think of when you are thinking about, I need to replace this. ⁓ well, this is electrical. That's, you and that's, you think it's this like special.
pipe or fitting
When you open the doors, the front door and the rear door of the Cleaver Brooks integral boiler design, you have to disconnect this airline fitting, the EMT, from the doors in order to swing the doors open. So you disconnect the line, you disconnect any other accessories that you have, maybe like a pilot line for your pilot gas into the...
boiler and maybe the main gas depending on the design. And then you unbolt the door and the door swings open on the front and the door swings open on the back.
The fitting that I am talking about, in this case the half inch compression fitting, it's a compression nut with a ferrule. A ferrule is a metal ring with a little split in it that can clamp down on a circular pipe, in this case EMT, and it helps grip the EMT and you can tighten down the nut.
on the ferrule into the fitting and it will hold the EMT from pulling out. This is typically used with electrical but it is used by Cleaver Brooks in this case for this airline and I asked the parts person, I said hey like I need another one of these because it's very common for the ferrule to get lost when people are open up the door the ferrule gets loose on the conduit and it falls off and you know they wash the floor and
then they go put it together and they don't properly secure the EMT to the front door and to the rear door and they screw up the fitting because the fitting has been tightened and loosened so many times. It's not really EMT typically for electrical manufacturers. It's going to be you tighten the fitting and then it just sits there for decades. You're not
constantly loosening and tightening the fitting. So it gets worn out and the fittings are only like two to three dollars or whatever, not even. So it's a very low cost fitting and it just needs to be replaced. the fitting threads into a ⁓ little 45 degree fitting and then that 45 degree pipe fitting threads into a thread-a-let that is welded to the door.
the front and the rear is a pipe that is kind of attached well I wouldn't say a pipe a tube that is attached to the rear door that goes up to the bottom of the side glass and if you're like I have no idea what he's talking about just look up a Cleaver Brooks boiler with the integral burner and if you find you'll find it in the manual and there's tons of pictures online it is probably like I said the most common
and recognizable boiler design out there, probably because it's just been around forever and the design has changed a little bit, but the overall, like how it looks on the outside has been mainly the same for decades. going back to the airline, so you take it apart, the ferrule can get lost, the nut can get lost, the nuts get all gummed up, the threads get all gummed up, but it is a
EMT compression fitting on one side and then on the other side is just straight thread. And that straight thread threads into the 45 degree pipe fitting that threads into the thread-a-let on the front door. And that thread-a-let is attached to the windbox of the front door. So the whole inner side of the front door of the integral burner is the windbox. And it's like, that's where you're...
The combustion air fan is on the inside of the front door and when it turns it creates air pressure inside the door and that air pressure is then forced in through the burner drawer and into the boiler. But at the bottom, it'll be on the bottom left-hand side if you're sitting or standing in front of the boiler. Well, I guess if the door opens the other way.
it would be the bottom right hand side. It's opposite of the hinge side, but the air fitting is on the bottom, you know, 45 degree left or right of six o'clock. And once again, snakes around to the backside of the boiler and gets connected to a tube that gets connected to the, that's permanently attached to the rear sight glass. And that fitting,
Very important to keep the EMT tight and connected to the boiler. And so it can cool it and the air comes from the combustion air fan. And that means it's inches of pressure of air. Like if you take the fitting off while the boiler is running, like it's just like somebody's blowing through a straw essentially. It's not like you take it off and there's a hundred PSI of air. When somebody says it's an airline,
They think of just compressed air and you take it off and it's this crazy amount of pressure. It is just the pressure of the fan, which I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it'll just be inches of pressure. The fan, doesn't create PSI of just 10 to 50 PSI of air pressure. Like it's not how a combustion air fan works, but
Very, very important to have this fitting connected and this group, I wanna talk about that. So hopefully you understand the importance of this cooling airline. It was mentioned that it was an equalizing airline. It is a cooling airline and it's essential for operation. And the person who asked the question said, hey, what is this fitting? I need it. And, ⁓ going back to...
When I was learning what this is and I said, hey, to a parts person, hey, I need this fitting, like what is it? And I'm assuming it's just some like.
Cleaver Brooks fitting, but I'm like, well, it can't be like proprietary to like Cleaver Brooks. Like it looks like a standard fitting, but I didn't know exactly what it was. And then they came back and were like, ⁓ like that's just a EMT fitting and we ordered them and here you go. And I'm like, ⁓ all right. I didn't realize that that was just EMT. So it's something you learn and then you're like, yeah, well that makes sense. Like it's not.
It doesn't have the very secure connection of like threaded or like pipe of like permanent attachment. once again, it is a airline, very, very, very low pressure. And it doesn't need to be this pressurized pipe and fitting attachment assembly. It does the job and has done the job for decades.
going over to this Facebook post and this is kind of what I want to talk about and I mentioned it in other episodes of you have to trust but verify what people tell you and this poor person asked a very very simple question that has a black and white answer and many many people replied and many many people want to feel special.
And let me read some of the comments of some of the people that replied. And this is kind of...
part of the problem of why people can't learn today and I'll go over that later. somebody said half inch EMT cap or plug both ends and move on not really needed. So if the person were to take that advice, they could remove it and plug both ends and then the rear door would get cherry red and
burn off and they would have to replace the rear door. So obviously somebody corrected them and
the person came back and said,
key point in my comment was plug both ends, how do other boiler companies get away with it? And then somebody corrected it down and said, nobody else gets away with it. And I think the person was talking about other boiler designs. You can't compare boiler designs between designs and say, well, they did it on this one, so they shouldn't need it on this one.
I think the confusion comes from some other boiler designs, especially with larger water tubes, will actually run compressed air lines to sight glasses to cool them. And that's what a lot of people think. And sometimes the compressed air lines are recommended but not absolutely required. On the Cleaver Brooks integral burner boiler design.
It is absolutely required to have that airline connected and it is part of the boiler design and you don't need like an outside compressed air source. The air comes from the combustion air fan. So as long as you just connect it and unconnect it when you do the maintenance and then connect it back up, no problems.
Here's another one. It appears to be an improvised fitting replaced with a 45 degree MPT street elbow to an MPT female fitting, something schedule 40 or schedule 80, then an MPT male fitting to a compression fitting with ferrule fitting for a correct tube size. So that's obviously wrong as everyone knows now, now that I've explained it and somebody corrected on that. It is not a improvised fitting. It's just a worn out.
EMT compression fitting. And the person goes on to...
say that EMT is not pressure rated and it needs to be changed and EMT fittings are straight thread because the opposite side of the compression fitting is a straight thread that threads into the 45 degree, 150 pound.
pipe fitting and people are saying that has to be since it's an airline it has to be pressure rated and
the fitting and threads will leak.
then they are corrected again and the person goes well I was told the poster the original poster said this is a low pressure boiler so since it's connected to the boiler this is the person commenting that since it's connected to the boiler it's going to be 15 psi or less and so it needs to be able to hold 15 psi and
every fitting used on a pressure side has to have some sort of rating, otherwise it shouldn't be legally used, and this is a very dangerous situation and a legal liability case.
And then they were once again corrected that the 15 PSI is for the steam side of the boiler and that this airline is not connected to the pressure vessel of the boiler, but it's actually connected to just the, well, what we would typically call the fire side, but it is connected to the windbox on one side and the sight glass.
for to view the fire on the other side and the only kind of pressure it's going to see is the pressure from the fan of the boiler on the front and really the pressure which is going to be just really the fan again but the pressure of combustion and the fan blowing air and fire and combustion gases down the Morrison tube and against the sight glass but the
the pressure from the fan is going to be greater than that pressure so the air flows from the windbox all the way through the tube and up into the sight glass and out of the sight glass so that the sight glass has a constant stream of fresh cool air to keep it from overheating from the gases of the combustion chamber.
Then we have probably one of my favorite comments and he followed it up multiple times and this guy knows everything and he tries to be the smartest person in the room and says that is most likely a 3000 pound thread lit with a similar 45 degree street elbow. What is the pipe size? There's no need to replace whatever fitting is there.
Don't reinvent the wheel here.
and the poster goes well you know it's 5 8's OD which is just half inch EMT.
And the guy obviously doesn't know what he's talking about because he's like, well, what's on the other side of the pipe? And, you know, what is this side of the pipe connected to? And what is the operating pressure? Is this low pressure steam? And then you could bend up a new piece of pipe and then get flared compression fittings and with a male adapter for the front of the door.
and go to Swagelock Parker Hannafin and get the proper fitting.
and that you need to figure out what kind of pipe you have. is very adamant about figuring out what kind of pipe he has, which it's once again, EMT, which is a very, very thin wall, drawn out metal.
And then he goes on to say, I'm just explaining options that you need to fix this properly. Getting parts for whatever fitting that is is a waste of time. The fitting that you're trying to keep isn't needed. And if you gave me more information, I would know what to do and how to fix this properly. The reason CB was no help, he's talking about Cleaver Brooks because the original poster mentioned that the
He reached out to a cleaver rep and they didn't know. He just talked to somebody evidently that ⁓ just didn't know what he was talking about. Not everybody, even at a cleaver rep, knows every single fitting and part of a boiler. Especially if you're just describing it over the phone.
Once again, this guy is commenting that CB was no help in the fact that this wasn't factory supplied or installed material. This is pipe fitting 101.
Once again, he's corrected and he keeps denying that he's wrong and then goes on to say, the manufacturer will show field installed fittings and pipings. They don't label these on purpose because they're installed by others, not factory supplied. And he was talking about how Cleaver Brooks didn't expressly call out what the fitting was in their manual and the person was looking in the manual. And so this commenter is...
incorrectly assuming that this is a field fitting and field supplied and Once again, he is corrected and then he says I don't have to be familiar with an application to know what standard pipe fittings are case in point here But I know you'll just Google this or use AI to answer me. What is the difference between? BESP and NPT. Can you tell me what schedule pipe it is? And once again, he has corrected that it is EMT and it is the correct fitting
and
in multiple other comments.
People go on to say, you need a ferrule, a proper ferrule and compression fitting for a flared tube. And once again, that is wrong. You just need this compression fitting for EMT.
another person incorrectly commented that ferrule looks especially like an electrical EMT conduit box connector definitely not pressure rated they were correct on the first part of that comment and i it probably isn't pressure rated it will hold pressure but it only needs to hold a couple inches of pressure and if it leaks it's not leaking anything other than
fresh air so it's not a leak hazard in this case and then they are commented or corrected of why does it need to be pressurated and the same reason that cast iron is pressurated and PVC is pressurated and building code and intrinsic strength and all this stuff
Somebody else says, call an electrician. That looks like EMT.
they would be correct, but an electrician, they would know how to replace it, but they would kind of be confused. But if you just said, replace these fitting in this EMT, they could do that.
Somebody else said, that is an electrical conduit connection and even has a star lock nut on it that is not for fluid, gas or pressure. He was corrected and then the person comes back and says, not in gas compression, you won't. Vacuum, LP, yada, yada, yada. EMT isn't even allowed for electrical because it allows moisture in it. EMT is crap.
and he was corrected again and then it was basically like why does Cleaver Books use this and he goes because they're cheap that's why I package skids and EMT won't fly and once again denies that he is wrong and the person correcting him is obviously wrong because they know best.
Another comment goes I thought this was a pipe fitting issue after reading the comments I see electricians know more about fittings than I do and Once again an electrician would recognize this over a pipe fitter because while it is used in a traditional pipe fitting sense in We are carrying low pressure air It is electrical fittings. So an electrician would be able to identify what those fittings are
faster or should be able to identify them easier than a pipe fitter.
Then another commenter says 30 years as a mechanical engineering technician journeyman millwright. This is only my two cents worth. Has anybody been working there since the boiler was installed? Or is this just what you've seen since you've been working there? I may have many years. They are recommending the person goes on to the recommend Parker Hannafin and it needs to be a.
flare type fitting and they need to change it to the proper line.
The same person goes on to say that this is a low pressure steam boiler and even if that is only 15 PSI or less, there's no way that a EMT compression fitting can keep all that pressure in and it's gonna cause a severe failure and if it does leak, it's gonna have live steam coming out of it and the owners of the equipment supervisor will say fix it now.
but they're not responsible for proper certifiable fittings and repairs, just bottom dollar and minimal downtime.
And that's basically the gist of the comments. If you DM me, I can send you the original post. I took screenshots of all the dumb comments just in case somebody deletes them. But the whole point of that is people are talking with absolute certainty. And while I understand that a lot of
Expression and intent is lost in a online post online, you know, especially, you know, a comment on a forum, you know, essentially that's what this is on Facebook forum. It's so easy for somebody just to type their opinion, hit post and leave. And this is dangerous, but it's also a lot of people once again, will dismiss this and say, well, that's just online. You know, people are jerks.
I've seen this happen in person and the key takeaway is one that the Cleaver Brooks integral burner design, which is probably the most popular design of firetube boiler out there since it's been around for so long. It has a cooling airline and you now understand that the the pipe is actually EMT electrical EMT and
The fittings are just electrical fittings, compression fitting on one side and straight thread on the other side. If you need to replace the fitting or replace the EMT, you can just go to your local hardware store or an electrical supply store and get the proper fittings. There's nothing special about them. Don't go to a pipe shop because they're gonna wanna sell you pipe.
This is not pipe, this is electrical fittings. It is proper per Cleaver Brooks. Cleaver Brooks has used this for decades on thousands and thousands of boilers. Don't listen to anybody that says it is not proper. Cleaver Brooks knows best. It works, it only holds inches of air pressure. But I wouldn't expect everybody to know what inches of air pressure is. They automatically assume because
the line is connected to the door of the boiler that it must be steam pressure coming out of that. I don't know how that would even make sense. But second is that people will unintentionally lie to you. I don't think a lot of people mean to lie. Like I don't believe that somebody says, you know what, this person asked for advice, let me lie here. But.
People want to be right and people also want to posture and have other people believe that they know best and to put others down. So they will type their opinion or what they think to be true as fact. Once again, keyword is fact here and it will mislead the original person. And where this gets dangerous is you are.
Working and you have one to three years of experience. So you basically know nothing. You may have been to a class or here to and have some formal training, but there's no way that you've seen everything that you need to see and have a good sense of how a boiler room works and like different designs of boilers and everything. And even regionally like this changes and depending on like scopes of work for companies, but
You're very, very new. And if you ask a question and somebody says, well, it's this, and you can believe them and you know, there's a time to question and there's a time to just do what you're told and then go back and question, but it's trust, but verify. This is especially important when you are on a job site alone and you are...
responsible for a repair or how to do something and You call somebody for help and they say well, this is what you have to do I Believe they mean best but it seems like a lot of people
don't have the filter of being able to express that they don't know. It is okay to not know. Even people who have worked on boilers and been around boilers for 30 some years or more do not know. And I would say they probably don't know more than you think. Just because they have tons of years of experience doesn't mean that experience is
over variety of equipment and somebody that works on large water tube boilers and it's always high pressure steam. If they walk into a smaller boiler room and it's condensing hydronic boilers, yeah they may be able to figure out what's going on and be familiar with everything, but I don't expect and it would be inappropriate for them to give expert advice.
but just because they work on huge boilers that are five stories tall and have a thousand PSI steam and super heaters and all this nonsense, yeah, it sounds super complicated, but they didn't design and engineer the system. And even if they did, that doesn't mean that smaller boilers and less complicated systems that they're an expert on them and they can give expert advice for everything else. There's scopes of work. The same reason
the, a person working on a BMW sports car, if a person that works on semis all the time, go, goes to look at a BMW and says, well, this is how you need to fix it. They don't actually know they can deduct. Okay. Yeah. We have a wheel here. Here's the suspension. Yep. Here's the engine. Yep. Here's the electrical harness. Like they, they, they know what they're looking at, but the actual, like, this is exactly what you have to do. this is gospel.
and you are to do it exactly like this and I know best because I work on big semi trucks. No, they're two different, totally different things and just because you think you know doesn't mean you actually know. And the whole takeaway from this is trust but verify, always question what you are told, always ask why within context. Like if you are new, and
And you have to feel this out. If somebody is very aggressive and they are just, do it my way. Why are you questioning me? It's probably not best to ask them why, but you can always ask with context, maybe do something and then go back and like ask them in a different environment and say, Hey, we did it that way. Like, why did we do that? I just want to know so that I can know for next time.
if I'm doing it by myself. And if they can't tell you why that you did something the way that you did, they don't actually know. And if they say, well, that's code or something, and they can't recite the code and give you the specific page numbers and code reference, they don't actually know. Many, many people say, well, that's code or it's the law and all that stuff. And if you ask them, well, what code is it? And they just say, boiler code.
Okay, like pull it up, let's see it. They don't actually know. Very few people can recite actual code. They may know generally what's in it, but if you are making a black and white decision of, we have to do it this way because it's code, you better be ready to pull up the code book and make sure that that code book is actually applicable for the situation that you are in and be able to cite with the section number and line number.
of the code that you are following because that's what it takes when you reference, that's code. Don't believe anything you hear from people that when they say, that's code and they can't tell you what the code is. They are most likely just telling you that because somebody else told them that it's code. And there is a difference between code and best practice as well.
That's the important distinction here. Best practices, well, you should do it this way, but it's not required. Code is these are the minimum requirements in order to do it.
So hopefully key takeaways, trust but verify, always ask why within context. And now you understand that the Cleaver Brooks Integral Boiler design for the airline that cools the rear sight glass, it is EMT, most likely half inch. I believe it can be other sizes as well, but a lot of the sizes are half inch EMT and.
They are EMT compression by thread fittings that connect the front and back of the EMT to the front and rear doors of the boiler. Hopefully you learned something here. Hopefully you asked the question why. And most importantly, if you don't know something, just say, I don't know, but this could be my best guess. If...
they really, really need advice or hey, let's look into this or point them in the right direction or tell them to ask somebody else that you may know that knows. But when you give your opinion and you give it as fact to somebody who is just going to blindly trust you, that is very misleading and very confusing because now they get confused as to why somebody who has more experience than...
them is telling them false information. And I think a lot of the industry, all skilled trades, but especially in the boiler industry, suffers from that is just because you've been on the job site longer, it doesn't mean you know more information. So I'm going to close that this episode with that. Please rate the episode five stars. If you like it, I have a couple of five star ratings on Apple and Spotify podcasts.
I just uploaded this podcast to YouTube. It is just an audio podcast though, but you can listen on YouTube now. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions of topics. Somebody did DM me on LinkedIn saying that they were listening from Canada.
Kevin, thank you for DMing me. He is from Alberta, Canada. Says, we share the same passion for boilers and education. Keep up the great work. So I appreciate those. Once again, I am mostly just talking off into the abyss when I do these podcasts. And if you enjoy them, you can DM me on LinkedIn or you can email me, Eric
[email protected] appreciate both of those. Once again, any topics, feedback, or if you want to be a guest or know somebody that should be a guest, DM me on LinkedIn or email me. Thank you for listening and stay wild.
