New Years Eve boiler testing..
I don't have more pictures of the actual boiler silver soldering. I had to switch to MAPP to get enough heat into the parts and the SS job isn't nearly as nice as others I've done as I had to reheat most of the joints a few times and was experimenting with different solders, fluxes and techniques, but it's all in one piece now.
Anyway... once it was soldered up, I turned up some plugs for the bushings, stuck some O-rings on them and chucked the whole thing into a bucket of water to check for major leaks. As you can tell, I did this outside.. neener, neener.. 68'F, sunny, warm and in the Northern hemisphere
No bubbles (don't be tempted to pressurize at this step, pressure testing is next), so on to -- Hydro testing.
The basic setup is a pan of water and the piston pump from my Slightly Loco build, seen here assembled:
To set up, attach the pump outlet to one bushing, plug the other and leave the uppermost open. Pump water in until it entirely fills the boiler and overflows, then screw in the pressure gauge. The idea is to have no air at all in the boiler or plumbing.
Then pump the pressure up to 60 PSI (the boiler is designed for 30 PSI), looking for leaks. As you can see, I switched on the date/time feature of the camera to help tracking. Started out a little over 60 PSI.
A few minutes in, I noticed the pressure had dropped a little and noticed a tiny water spot on the plastic base
The leak was coming from one of the joints on the pump line, so I decided to ignore it for now and kept checking elsewhere for leaks, bulges and other issues.
After 30 minutes, the pressure was down to just over 50 PSI, and the water spot was a little larger, but no other leaks appeared, so we'll call it good.
I tried to make a video demonstrating what happens if it springs a leak and why water is used instead of compressed air for this test, but it was so unspectacular that I didn't bother editing up the video...
Happy New Year everybody!
- Roy