Heard a guy at the supply house say he never checks his hydrostatic relief valve

I was picking up some 2-inch schedule 80 pipe in Tacoma yesterday and this younger guy was bragging to the counter guy about how he skips checking the relief valve on his old water tube boiler to save time. Said it hadn't blown in 'years'. That's a fast track to a real bad day. My first foreman showed me a picture of a boiler door that blew clean off a shell from a stuck valve. How do you even get through an apprenticeship thinking that's okay? What's the dumbest shortcut you've heard someone try to take?

3 comments

3 Comments

kimfisher1mo ago

It's wild how people forget that valve isn't just for the boiler, it's for the whole building's plumbing. If that thing locks up, the pressure backs up into the cold water lines and can blow apart fixtures anywhere. Saw a toilet supply line burst from that once, flooded a whole floor.

sage_moore371mo ago

Ugh, that sounds like a nightmare.

max2231mo ago

Disagree on the pressure backing up into cold lines. Most modern systems have a check valve or a pressure reducing valve on the cold feed. That keeps it separate. A locked boiler valve usually just causes issues with the heating loop itself, not the domestic water. The toilet line burst might have been from a different problem, like a faulty fill valve or existing corrosion. Seen that happen a lot more often.