Best Of

Have you ever cut one open?

yeah I tend to agree but real steam is a sure thing test if you have it available

my water is clean but no cleaner than lots of others out there. I didn’t use distilled from day one. I have fouled it several times for experiments. Anyone can get clean water, and a lot cheaper than a repipe.

But all that is irrelevant. Even with bad water, even with carryover, the BTUs still go into the system and are not lost.

Balancing might not be ideal but the house gets all the heat.

And you said something similar to the person @MikeC_3 whose mother's house was experiencing very historically large bills and he correctly diagnosed it as a main venting problem. That was apparently causing her boiler to run longer to satisfy the thermostat. When he replaced the main vent the problem was solved and her bills plummeted. I know it isn't the exact situation and I am not saying it is but it proves that the "no Btus lost" mantra is faulty and overly simplistic when it comes to fuel efficiency of heating the house.

There is a fire under my boiler.

17% of the energy goes up the chimney.

83% goes into the boiler water.

When the boiler water gets to 212F all that energy makes steam.

The steam can only go into my pipes and radiators.

There is no possible loss in efficiency.

If you can show such a loss, do it. I can’t because it’s not there.

Define "performs fine". In your video you said "everything's fine". One of the most important things to the persons paying the bill is fuel efficiency. Like I said in your video comments why don't you take it further and do some measurements of fuel efficiency? It may be a bit late in the season for this now but you would keep it going for an entire billing cycle and compare to the same month last year accounting for degree days. Solar insolation matters too but I don't know how you'd factor that in or get the data. If you do this you would prove your claim that no BTUs are lost. It would also be interesting to put your thermal imaging camera on a tripod and capture video of a radiator over a full boiler cycle for comparison for when you switch back to your overbuilt double takeoff drop header installation with 9.2 fps velocity.

Also, your water quality and boiler are pristine to a level that is simply not realistic when compared to the situations that are out in the field. You used distilled water and 8 way from day one of this installation. Your TDS and TSS are practially nill. You should throw some iron oxide particles into the boiler to simulate 50 to 100 ppm TSS that is probably very common in people's real world installs and with the lack of maintenance that is rampant out there.

the point of the video and the thread is not to promote non-recommended piping

It’s to provide better advice to homeowners who may have existing not great piping.

I’ve shown that absolute crap piping performs fine with good water quality.

Thanks. My hypothesis is that nothing in the piping can affect water content in our steam, we have no way to measure it anyway, and regardless all the BTUs generated in the boiler make their way to the radiators anyway (because where else would the BTUs be going??).

If someone can prove those assertions wrong then I'd be thrilled to see that evidence. But so far people just want to tell me I'm wrong without evidence so I ignore them.

What is it about the velocity that would affect the efficiency? Where do the lost BTUs go?

As I have described, when the velocity in an undersized supply pipe is high, the velocity in the steam chamber is by definition slowed (because the steam can’t get out as fast). It’s ironic but results in a lower chance of “wet steam”.

Is there a license that has a question about steam velocity on its test?