Are you sensing a theme here? Gunk. Steam systems don’t have many maintenance problems, which is what is so nice about them. But we must be ever vigilant about gunk. The other place gunk shows up and causes problems is in the little 1/4″ pipe connecting the Pressuretrol. Remember that the pressuretrol is a safety device, and if it senses that the pressure is too high, it dutifully shuts down the boiler. If gunk gets in that little pipe, as it is want to do, it will fool the Pressuretrol into thinking the pressure is too high and shut down the boiler. Usually in the middle of February when it’s -20º outside. Now in theory you might think it pretty simple to just unscrew the pressuretrol and stick a pipe cleaner in there and get back to heating again. Except that you can’t. Before you can unscrew the Pressuretrol you have to unwire everything first. Things just went from simple to complicated. To avoid this, we offer custom “trees”on all our Pressuretrols and Vaporstats installations as an option. No unwiring required to clean out the piping. We also increase the pipe diameter so a clog is less likely in the first place. See? We are always thinking about you.