Best Of

good catch on the air going in and out

The B&G has the float vent removed and just the purger part connected to the tank fitting

Of course you could install a Steam system from scratch, but finding a person capable of designing it, installing it and then servicing it are the issues. I did it in my gutted 1899 Victorian Farmhouse in the early 2000s with Period radiators.

Unless you can find such a person, I would recd that you install a multi-zoned Hot Water system with Period reproduction radiators. Same look, much easier to zone and control. Mad Dog

No lies told. I follow a few home inspectors on IG who show issues with new homes. It's crazy how poorly they are built these days. $500K+ homes just shoddy throughout. I will always opt for and older house built at least before 1970.

This thread adapter fits most of the brass air vents, Taco offers them also

This just converts that metric thread to NPT so you can can put a copper tube on the outlet

While the spiro has a 1/2 npt, the hole in that stem is around 1/8”, that would be the limiting factor in how much air vents out

The air discharge port on a SpiroVent is 1/2”MPT, so that can be piped to a compression tank to maintain the air cushion.

I’m not aware if any other brands of air separators (MBR) that are made that way.

It has been a long process but the boiler is up and running. The new Weil-McClain CGa3 with indirect dhw is functioning. The system is our radiant floor heating using a Tekmar 4 way mixing valve with Actuator Motor and Tekmar 360 Controller.

The hvac fellow provided so much assistance but the setup of the 360 Controller is still a challenge. Everything is wired, a big thanks to Ed!,who helped me out with some schematics.

But I am running the 4 Way Mixing Valve manually at present as I, and the hvac fellow gave me this chore, am still trying to figure out the settings. Being a finish carpenter/ woodworker does help!

So a step at a time.

Not a crazy idea at all. Some commercial hot water baseboard contains one, two or three rows of element (pipe with fins).

Systems with plain steel compression tanks are referred to as air management systems. Meaning that the air bubble in the compression tank cannot be removed, it is the expansion space.

B&G and others devised a couple components to allow air captured in the top of the boiler sections to be placed into the tank via their Airtrol ™ components.

B&G also shows both the IAS inline air separator and the EAS enhanced air separator, a micro bubble type air separator being used instead of the Airtrol fitting into the boiler.

I believe both of these B&G products have been discontinued.

On my solar drainback tank at my last shop I piped the air vent discharge from a Discal up to the air space in the solar tank. In fig 5-10 it shows the Discal piped to the top of the tank at a cross fitting, and the siphon break air tube piped to that cross. So any air removed from the circulation, gets placed in the air bubble at the top of the tank.

I believe any microbubble type purger with a treaded vent connection could be used on a boiler system with the steel compression tank.

Any experiences with this arrangement?

Hi, @EBEBRATT-Ed mentioned gravity hot water. I built that system into my house and it works nicely. I did use finned copper in the walls, so there is nothing to see, but it wasn't so difficult and the math is waiting for us in the old books.

Yours, Larry

ps. It cost far less that scorched air. 😊