jplante4 wrote:
I had a ruptured diagram in the furnace (forced hot water) piping that caused the TP valve to intermittently open and dump furnace water into the basement. The makeup water valve kept supplying water to the furnace. I WAS HOME and caught it within an hour and still had 2 inches of water in the basement. I turn off the water when I go camping. I don't understand the down side of doing this.
If the water gets low it will fry your boiler. As I mentioned it is a good idea to have a drain in your boiler room.
Low-Water Conditions
The potential for severe and even catastrophic damage to a boiler as a result of low-water conditions is easy to imagine considering that furnace temperatures exceed 1,800°F, yet the strength of steel drops sharply at temperatures above 800°F. The only thing that allows a boiler to withstand these furnace temperatures is the presence of water in all tubes of the furnace at all times that a fire is present. Low-water conditions will literally melt steel boiler tubes with the result closely resembling a spent birthday candle, as shown above.
http://www.nationalboard.org/index.aspx?pageID=164&ID=238
