Many business and building owners aren’t sure of the type of boiler they have. I’d like to give you a brief rundown on how you differentiate a commercial steam boiler from a water boiler (hydronic boiler).
1. Steam boilers do not operate on the temperature of the fluid inside them. Water boilers (hydronic boiler) have temperature controls.
2. On a steam boiler, we have steam pressure controls, a steam pressure gauge that shows us steam pressure, and most importantly a water level glass that shows the water level in the boiler.
We have a low water cutoff; actually there’s two on this system, auxiliary secondary manual reset there, this is the automatic low water cutoff which serves as a combination safety to turn it off and on a demand for water into the boiler we actually have a condensate tank attached to this system. This is where the condensate returning from the system is stored until it needs to be pumped to the boiler.
The big difference between a hot water boiler again and a steam boiler is that a steam boiler operates on steam pressure – the flow through the system is created by the steam pressure in the boiler, where hot water boilers are operated on water temperature and have circulator pumps that circulate water through the system.