Best Of

Could be a flange gasket where the pipe covering blows up in size or a union but most likely the boiler. Flood it when it is cold as others have mentioned.

@mattmich and @ethicalpaul , the other part of the equation is……. balance.

You want the steam to reach the ends of all the mains, not only quickly, but also at about the same time. Once you accomplish that, the steam is available at every tee where a radiator connects, and will rise to all the radiators at the same time. Balancing the heat in all the rooms is easy when you do it this way.

This is where "pipe math" comes in. Once we know how much air is in each main, we have our starting point for sizing vents. Occasionally we need to make changes from the original sizings, but having that starting point gets the job done faster.

And @ethicalpaul and @mattmich I agree with you both! And for another look at it, Cedric is a fairly decent sized boiler (fires at 3.3 gph). The system is fairly decent sized (total of arund200 feet of 2 and 2.5 inch mains).

And the whole show is vented with a stable pressure of 2 ounces per square inch gauge by one Hoffman 75 and one Gorton #2…

My own way of figuring it is different — I look at pressure profiles rather than times — but the end result is the same.

My concern over the copper is not based on the copper itself as it is probably fine. My concern over using copper is that it "points to" may have been installed by a "hot water plumber" versus a "steam fitter" who would likely stick to black pipe. Hot water plumber may not be aware of or take pipe pitch seriously

The change in diameter from Steel to Copper of the same size is not an issue.

Can't tell from pics but the copper pipe in the second picture running back to the riser probably is run flat as there is no swing joint. The hammer could be in that location. The bottom of the riser should have a swing joint and be pitched back to the boiler. You can get away with 1 pipe being flat but if you have 2 pipes flat that causes issues especially if the rises goes up a distance as you will get more condensate in the riser flowing down faster on a cold start

The Gorton is a larger vent maybe slowing the venting could calm things down and make it workable.

Do you know the size of the copper pipe and what the EDR of both radiators is? Looks like maybe 1 1/4" which is good for 55EDR 1" is good for 25EDR?

You burn a lot of fuel and go no where because you have a fan cooled radiator to dissipate the heat.

That same radiator and or a transmission cooler also try to get rid of some of the heat from the torque converter if applicable. If you do it long enough you'll overheat things. It won't just burn fuel and make the heat vanish.

A steam boiler with no vents or bad venting, no radiators etc cannot get rid of it's heat so the burner just shuts down. The heat isn't going to just disappear. IMO it'll result in a cold house, but not astronomical fuel bills, it goes against the First Law of Thermodynamics.

$20,000 in a season, you're not talking about energy steam mains can dissipate.

@ethicalpaul If you run a steam boiler with poor venting the house cant heat. The basement will be very warm (yes heat goes up through the floor) but the boiler will constantly cycle on pressure, and the fuel bill will be extreme.

It's like a car. Drive the bumper up against a big tree and keep the gas pedal down. You burn a lot of fuel but don't go anywhere.

All the old steam jobs I looked at if the boiler room was excessively hot look at the venting

I wish I could have seen the coal stoker boiler that heated this house.

Rent a 4 or 5 foot pipe wrench and 4 pound hammer or buy a 5 foot length of pipe to use on the pipe wrench to get the bushing out of there. If you have a wagner paint melting gun use it for 10 minutes on the cast iron around the bushing and have someone lean against the radiator to hold it in place or better yet and safer lay it on a 6 by 6 or 8 by 8 to use the floor as a back stop to remove the bushing if you do not feel up to using a sawzall to cut it in two or three places.