Faema boiler damaged from freezing...

[Crispy]

I'm helping a friend with a Faema 2 head machine from the 80's. There are two sets of round ports at the top and bottom of the boiler that the main pipes for the heads go through. They resemble freeze plugs in the block of a car engine and the piping runs right through them and into the boiler. These round plates have pushed out or ripped from the boiler freezing with water in it. How bad is this damage? Are these round ports serviceable? Are those lines in and out of the boiler heat exchangers? Thanks in advance for help with this terribly unfortunate situation C.

 

[shadow745]

The lines in/out would be for the heat exchanger(s). Line going in would be for the boiler fill. Lines out would be for steam and possibly hot water. Hydraulics for a commercial machine often confuses many...

Hard to say what sort of damage is done without looking at it, but most often if a boiler has been stressed to this degree it probably needs to be replaced. Have read that heat exchangers usually fail in freeze situations.

 

[Crispy]

So can anyone speak to how these boilers fail from freezing? In our case, we don't know if the heat exchanger is split because we can't see it but we do know the boiler shell is damaged because we can see that. Do those heat exchanger entry points fail first like a freeze plug and save the boiler? Are they brazed in, soldered in or pressed in? If you had to replace a heat exchanger, you would have to remove it.... Thanks, C.