Rant: spent 6 hours chasing a leak on a 48 inch mud drum when it was one tube seat all along

Harper Murphy · 2026-09-14T15:30:05.63838+00:00

Had a small water wall boiler in Hammond that kept weeping at the mud drum handhole, so I pulled the gasket, cleaned the seat, put in a new one and torqued it to spec. Still leaked. Did it again, then a third time. Finally I put soapy water on every tube seat and found it was a pinhole in a rolled joint two feet over, the water was running down the drum and pooling right at the handhole. Whole job took 6 hours for something I should have found with a $2 bottle of dish soap in 20 minutes. Anyone got a better way to check tube seats without pulling the whole drum?

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Rant: spent 6 hours chasing a leak on a 48 inch mud drum when it was one tube seat all along | Boilermakers - Hub Chatter