With the economic turnaround in recent years, the high demand and low inventory of quality used industrial boilers ready for service has made them a challenge to source for brokers and used equipment dealers.

Even the best boiler equipment can't protect a facility from the potential danger posed by human error, lack of training or poor maintenance. "We've always done it this way" is often recipe for disaster. This is the final installment in our 10 part weekly series.

Aged equipment poses a challenge when it comes to true codes compliance. While it may meet the letter of law and pass on paper, reality is often a completely different story. Is your equipment putting your facility at risk? This is the ninth installment in our 10 part weekly series.

While maintaining documentation of operational or emergency procedures, maintenance, equipment and compliance is common sense, many facilities have poor recordkeeping habits. How does yours compare? This is the eighth installment in our 10 part weekly series.

Improperly maintained equipment can result in poor performance, frequent breakdowns, costly outages, and even worse. This is the seventh installment in our 10 part weekly series.

While ASME and NFPA guidelines require boiler operator and maintenance training, the reality is that practical skills and troubleshooting techniques are often ignored in many training programs despite the fact that they are among the most important things operators and maintenance staffs should understand. This is the sixth installment in our 10 part weekly series.

Required by law to fully inspect and test, fuel train safety devices which are interlocked, or linked, to a burner management system (BMS) controller are often inadequately tested for proper operation or neglected entirely due to budget limitations or lack of experience. This is the fifth installment in our 10 part weekly series.

The improper warm-up of a steam boiler is one of the hardships a boiler must endure. Good design and the process of making a slow transition between these conditions are essential for prolonging boiler life and reducing the possibility of failure. This is the fourth installment in our 10 part weekly series.

Poor maintenance of boiler feedwater can lead to scale build up and tube corrosion inside the boiler, which not only rob it of performance efficiency but can cause an unexpected shutdown due to tube failure. This is the third installment in our 10 part weekly series.

Improper boiler blowdown can result in scale and sludge formation, corrosion and moisture carryover, poor equipment performance and worse. This is the second installment in our 10 part weekly series.