Best Of

"Water osmosis its way out?" Probably can't because a water molecule is too large.

You'd best believe that oxygen and osmosis really is…"a thing."

When you said that this is inefficient

It is because someone capped off some of the radiators. When you cap off a Monoflo® radiator you are restricting the entire one pipe main to the smaller orifice opening on the inside of the tee. When the system was installed in the 1950s (or when ever) it worked just fine because someone did the math and figured the restriction and heating value befro selecting the radiators and piping design. Somewhere along the line someone who did not do the math removed the path that some of that water is supposed to take.

In the upper right diagram I have marked up some hypothetical answers to the questions on the diagram.

In the lower right diagram I have also marked up what might happen when that Red radiator is removed and the supply and return pipes to that radiator are capped off. The restriction of each capped off tee will reduce to flow to the entire system. the first one that is capped off will do the most damage to the gallon per minute GPM flow rate. then each following capped off radiator will add to the restriction to the point where the amount of water flowing thru that one pipe main may be so slow that there is not enough heat for the rest of the radiators. When you read the book I posted on line above, you will see a rule of thumb about 1 GPM = 10,000 BTUs. If the loop that is inefficient is only flowing 2.5 GPM when it should be at 5 GPM, then you only have 25,000 BTUs for all the radiators in that loop. Not 50,000. Even though you have a big enough pipe, you are adding restriction three times with those three capped off radiators.

The correct way to remove a radiator from a MonoFlo® system is this:

This way the full GPM amount entering the Tee at one end of the branch can exit at the other Tee at the end of the branch… So I hate to say it but… you need to put everything back the way you found it then pipe in those bypass pipes.

oh, right this was the thing i tried to explain to someone before and whoever it was just wasn't getting it.

@LRCCBJ I believe that you mean this when you say the direction matters. In this illustration the arrow is in the correct direction for a Diverter tee to be placed on the radiator return. By placing that tee on the supply, it is WRONG. So the arrow matters only if you are placing it on the proper side of the radiator.

By restricting the flow entering the supply side of the radiator it as doing the same thing as capping off the unused radiator location. The entire one pipe main is restricted.