Steam Boiler: Freezing weather?

[CharlosCarlies]

Our boiler sits outside in an un-insulated shed, and I was wondering what steps you guys would take to deal w/ this freezing weather. We aren't operational yet, but would it be best to just keep the boiler running?

Cheers and thanks!

[Starcat]

Boiler Location

This set up is a very large mistake.
A boiler should never be in a location where it may possibly freeze.
The efficiency losses also would be the least of your worries.
It needs a proper building or room with sized combustion air AND you need to make provosions to add heat to keep said room above the freeze point if the boiler locks out and is no longer producing waste heat to keep the room warm. Freezing one up will destroy it, and then you'll be down for a while.
Your condensate return tank, chemical feed system and your fresh makeup water components also will not be ok in such a setting.
Every boiler in the known universe is going to lock out, its just a question of when and on what fault.

[CharlosCarlies]

Thanks for the feedback.

We're in Texas, so it's pretty rare to have more than a few days below freezing. Even then it's rarely more than 5-10F below at the worst. I'm wondering why our boiler installers didn't say anything about putting it outside? The "room" could very easily be completely closed in, insulated, etc...so if it really was that big of a mistake at least we should be able to remedy the situation.

For the time being I've been just leaving the boiler running. We insulated as many cold water pipes as we could, and the feed tank and rest of the piping seems pretty warm. The room is definitely 10F or so above ambient and it's only supposed to get to around 20F tonight, so hopefully we can sweat this out!