Venting steam mains

Phillip Biston

I have a building with a 1,575,000 btu H.B. Smith boiler with 260' of 5 inch mains total. It starts with one large main out of the header and goes to the other side of the building and splits and wraps around the perimeter of the building and ends with 2 returns at the boiler.
One leg is a little longer than the other and I have 4 Gorton #2's on that leg and 3 #2's on the other.

One problem I am having is the air coming out of the vents is whistling very loud, like not enough venting, and I don't know how many #2's I can put on a 1/2" pipe without the pipe itself becoming the resriction. Also It is not a steady flow of air, it pulses.

Also I cant keep the boiler room cool enough to let the #2's release, and the only solution I can think of is to pipe them outside the building, any thoughts?

Thanks,
Phillip

Jim Pompetti

Your main problem is 1/2 tap. If I recall correctly 1 is all its good for . Drill it out to 3/4.

John S.

You can put...

2 Gorton #2s on a 1/2" pipe without restriction being an issue. Heat from the boiler room should in no way prevent the vents from working.

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thfurnitureguy_4

Any broken hangers and sagging pipes? your pulse could be a water filled main. vent chart is available in the books section of this site.

Steamhead (in transit)

In some cases

Gorton #2 vents are affected by high ambient temperatures. If your vents are at the end of dry return lines, move them to just after the last radiator takeoff on each steam main if this will get them out of the boiler room.

On such a large system, it would pay to have a welder come in and weld 1-inch thread-o-lets to the steam pipe, as we did on a recent large project.

John S.

Steamhead...

Thanks for clarifying.

As the old saying goes... you learn something new every day. I am curious what kind of temps are we talking about?

Philip, sorry for misleading you. I had not ran into this problem before.

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Steamhead (in transit)

It seems to involve

a lot of heat radiating off of different things in the boiler room, rather than high air temps themselves. I haven't been able to nail it down myself. But moving the vents away from the heat sources will help.