Is 1920s 3 stories steam pipes insulated behind wall?

Perry_3

If those steam pipes are insulated in the walls... It will almost with total certainty - be asbestos insulation given its age. So to remove it - you would need to "abate" it.

Your best bet... Just leave it alone unless you are going to strip down all the walls for rewiring and modern insulation.

Given the age of the house you wouldd have knob and tube wiring in those walls -- unless someone has rewired it (pulling romex through the walls). Knob and tube has either bare - or lighly insulated wiring (when it was new) that was supported as single strands on porcelin insulator "knobs" that were spaced every several feet. They would use "tubes" to feed these bare or lightly insulated wires into junction and termination boxes. The insulation on the wires, if it existed at all, is probably all cracked up and falling off.

If you have live knob and tube wiring your insulation options are limited. People have literelly caused house fires by blowing in celleous or pooring in various insulating materials - which has cause a short from the suspended wires.

I personally would not worry about the steam pipes in those walls (regardless of if they were insulated or not). They are probably doing quite well. I would worry more about the wiring. I could not live in a house of that vintage without upgrading to modern wiring (Knob and tube has no dedicated ground either). In many cases you can pull new romex based wiring through the walls and rewire most existing recepticals. In some cases you can add recepticles from the attic or basement to interior walls. In a few cases you may have to abandon some of the original recepticle or lighting circuits unless you are willing to cut into the plaster walls (or tear down to studs and start over).

Of course, if you are going to strip the walls down to the studs for rewiring - I would take advantage of the oportunity to insulate the steam lines as well. If you do strip down to the studs and start over I'd also wire for computers and other electronics to many rooms - or leave some "open" plastic conduit runs to unused boxes on the walls to handle future options.

I would get a good electrician in there to evaluate the house wiring (unless you are already planning on redoing it, or you know that it already has been rewired and all the original knob and tube is "dead").

Perry

davevarga

Are my 1920's house steam pipes behind the wall insulated?

I have a 1920s house with single pipe steam heat, house is three floors in height.

Generally, are steam pipes behind the wall insulated ?!?

I can see they had asbestos originally in the basement, most of that was taken off and replaced by fiberglass. However, what happens behind the walls as the pipes vertically rise to 2nd and third floors?

And if they are not generally insulated, would it make sense to open the walls and insulate them? When I say make sense, I mean make the heating of the house more efficient, rather than heating the space between the walls.

Thanks !

Brad White_9

I guess

short of hitting the walls with a drill and a wire or scanning with an IR thermometer, you would have to bust open a wall and take a look. I have seen as many uninsulated as insulated. Wait, I have seen relatively few insulated.

Unless you are planning major renovation anyway and the place heats and the system well, I see no harm in leaving things as they are. Abatement alone can create more hazard short term at least, than leaving it all alone.

If you blow in insulation into the walls you would be doing a good thing either way, insulating the pipe and the wall.

Matt Undy

Sometimes you can see the insulation where it was cut off flush with the wall or floor when it was removed. You could also pull off a baseboard to look behind.

Sometimes they would fill the wall cavity with vermiculite as insulation. You could try that if you wanted. Be careful if you still have knob and tube wiring in service, that can't be encased in insulation. An easier fix that would give you some increased insulation would be to make sure you seal off the bypasses from the cavities that contain the pipes into the attic and the basement. If you stop air movement from those areas out of the structure, you will keep most of the heat lost off the pipes inside the structure without having to get inside the walls.

Matt

davevarga

Brad,

What do you mean by abatement? I am assuming that if I open it up to check, even with a relatively small hole and there is no insulation, I can pour it. If there is insulation, I close back up the hole.

When you say abatement I think asbestos.. but perhaps that is not what you mean...

Dave

Brad White_169

Abate ye Hearties!

Dave, Hi

Yes, abatement refers to asbestos in this case. (Abatement as a term is the removal of any hazardous material from chemical spills to lead paint to asbestos.)


If your pipes are insulated there is a much greater than even chance that it is asbestos or asbestos-laden cement. Often this has a canvas jacket and is held in place with metal bands.

If it is not insulated, you are home-free. Insulate away.

If it is insulated, encapsulation seems to be the cost-effective treatment. Abatement is a messy and often wet process.

davevarga

more on steam pipe insulation

OK... Now that the pipes on in the basement are sealed and the first flr far radiator is working fine, my focus is on squeezing out some more heat on the third floor, which is quite underheated, this is my apartment. In the coldest point of winter it could dip to 50 degrees up here.

I am now very aware of the danger of insulation and electric...

I do not want to do major tearing down, just provide some type of insulation to two vertical pipes in particular, if that can safely be done.

This house has no knob and tube wiring that I can find and I looked quite hard. All is the flat and round romex, plus that other type of electric wire that has the coiled flat wire shielding.

I drilled into the first insied wall to make an opening to take a look at it. It is raw steam pipe, no coating on it. Now I have to confirm this by drilling another hole high up and working a mirror and flashlight, but assuming the space is free of any wire or any other item besides the steam pipe, do you see any reason that I could not fill that space with cellulose, that fire retardent treated fiber? I say cellulose because I looked into verimiculite and it might have asbestos, stop.

So that is on an inside wall. I have another pipe on an outside wall as well, this pipe being in between the plaster and the outside clapboard. Assuming that I open the wall and confirm there is no electric, is it safe to fill that with cellulose? Any danger of water entering the space from spaces in between clapboard? (the clapboard looks good from the outside, house repaired, recently painted.

If the pipe is sufficiently spaced in between the walls, I could slip a fiberglass shield around it, however the pipe is too close to one of the walls to do that. I hope the outside wall will allow that.

More of your thoughts please... This has been extremely helpful...

Perry_3

My thoughts

Please be advised that I have personally seen two houses where people had rewired the basement, attic, and other easy access areas - but still had live knob and tube wiring in the walls.

Perhaps you are lucky and the whole house has already been rewired and all the original knob and tube is dead.

In a house your age you must assume that it was originally wired with knob and tube - and be watchfull of it. A very few houses were built in that era with "black" asphault based "romex" (which may also have insulation that is starting to crack) and I have seen some armored cable from those years. However, again the wiring insulation inside the armor may or may not be really great - but is at least protected and will likely only blow a fuse if it shorts.

However, if by drilling holes and visually inpecting between each set of studs you can verify that there is not any knob and tube in that stud bay (all the way up and down) - you can go ahead and insulate. If you find knob and tube you will need to verify that it is dead (disconnected).

If that helps with the heat... Great.

I would still consider rewiring unless you are seeing modern white, yellow, or blue romex. If you are looking at original wiring - it is about 80 years old. At a minimum it has limited capacity - and more likely the insulation and wires are starting to degrade. I know that rewiring is not fun (I've done a couple of houses); but you come out of it knowing that your electical is great and you have no worries (as long as you do - or have done - a competent job; and bad rewiring will not get you much of an improvement).

Best of luck with this.

Perry

Matt Undy

> OK... Now that the pipes on in the basement are

> sealed and the first flr far radiator is working

> fine, my focus is on squeezing out some more heat

> on the third floor, which is quite underheated,

> this is my apartment. In the coldest point of

> winter it could dip to 50 degrees up here.

>

> I

> am now very aware of the danger of insulation and

> electric...

>

> I do not want to do major

> tearing down, just provide some type of

> insulation to two vertical pipes in particular,

> if that can safely be done.

>

> This house has no

> knob and tube wiring that I can find and I looked

> quite hard. All is the flat and round romex,

> plus that other type of electric wire that has

> the coiled flat wire shielding.

>

> I drilled into

> the first insied wall to make an opening to take

> a look at it. It is raw steam pipe, no coating

> on it. Now I have to confirm this by drilling

> another hole high up and working a mirror and

> flashlight, but assuming the space is free of any

> wire or any other item besides the steam pipe, do

> you see any reason that I could not fill that

> space with cellulose, that fire retardent treated

> fiber? I say cellulose because I looked into

> verimiculite and it might have asbestos,

> stop.

>

> So that is on an inside wall. I have

> another pipe on an outside wall as well, this

> pipe being in between the plaster and the outside

> clapboard. Assuming that I open the wall and

> confirm there is no electric, is it safe to fill

> that with cellulose? Any danger of water

> entering the space from spaces in between

> clapboard? (the clapboard looks good from the

> outside, house repaired, recently painted.

>

> If

> the pipe is sufficiently spaced in between the

> walls, I could slip a fiberglass shield around

> it, however the pipe is too close to one of the

> walls to do that. I hope the outside wall will

> allow that.

>

> More of your thoughts please...

> This has been extremely helpful...



Many of these replies didn't get to me..but anyhow, hav eyou tried less invasive options to get the poorly heating radiator to heat, such as puting faster venting on it and the main leading toward it?

Matt Undy

Many of these replies didn't get to me..but anyhow, have you tried less invasive options to get the poorly heating radiator to heat, such as puting faster venting on it and the main leading toward it? Try runign a cycle of the boiler with the vent from the radiator removed completely and see if you get heat out of it. Possibly changing the anticipator on the t-stat to run longer cycles could also help.

> OK... Now that the pipes on in the basement are

> sealed and the first flr far radiator is working

> fine, my focus is on squeezing out some more heat

> on the third floor, which is quite underheated,

> this is my apartment. In the coldest point of

> winter it could dip to 50 degrees up here.

>

> I

> am now very aware of the danger of insulation and

> electric...

>

> I do not want to do major

> tearing down, just provide some type of

> insulation to two vertical pipes in particular,

> if that can safely be done.

>

> This house has no

> knob and tube wiring that I can find and I looked

> quite hard. All is the flat and round romex,

> plus that other type of electric wire that has

> the coiled flat wire shielding.


The round romex is from the 40's or 50's. If it has plastic insulation inside it isn't so bad. if it has cloth and rubber insulation inside its not too great. The "coled flat wire shielding" wire is BX cable or armoured cable. Generally older than the romex and can ahve a particularly nasty habit of gettign corroted between the spirals so the reistance to a fault is the whole length of the spiral instead of the length of the tube and can draw enough current to get red hot wihtout blowing a fuse.

The round tar and cloth outer covering romex usually doesn't have a ground (the flat cloth and tar type romex also frequently doesn't have a ground). This is less safe than having a safety ground, but it can be mitigated to a large extent by adding GFCI protection or a groudn wire where appliances require a ground (usually appliances with large motors require an actual ground).

Knob and tube always had a rubber coating held in place with a cloth coating and all splices were insulated with rubber tape covered with firction tape if it was installed propperly. Knob and tube that has been installed propeprly and is fused properly is relatively safe. The danger comes when someone overfuses it or makes modificatiosn to it with improper techniques, or puts a load on it that it wasn't intended to handle (the maximum load allowed on a circuit by the code is less than what will cause the fuse to blow, if you are blowing fuses, you are overloading the circuit by somewhere around 20%). A fuse is a safety device against failures, not chronic overlaoding from poor design/failure to add more circuits when demand increases.

It is very likely that someone has made impropper modifications in the past 80 years, this is where the real danger lies, and there is a good chance the impropper work may be buried inside a wall somewhere.

BTW, were the fires caused by conduction through wet insulation? I thought the danger was the insulation would hold in heat on overlaoded wiring or impropper splices (not soldered or made with a wire nut or crimp splice).

>

> I drilled into

> the first insied wall to make an opening to take

> a look at it. It is raw steam pipe, no coating

> on it. Now I have to confirm this by drilling

> another hole high up and working a mirror and

> flashlight, but assuming the space is free of any

> wire or any other item besides the steam pipe, do

> you see any reason that I could not fill that

> space with cellulose, that fire retardent treated

> fiber? I say cellulose because I looked into

> verimiculite and it might have asbestos,

> stop.


I'd prefer fiberglass to cellulose, rodents seem to like my cellulose. You'd probably needa blower to be able to get either in. I beleive the vermiculite that is available today is mined form areas were it is not contaminated with asbestos, but you'd want to look into it. It did sometimes have asbestos as a contaminate in the past.

>

> So that is on an inside wall. I have

> another pipe on an outside wall as well, this

> pipe being in between the plaster and the outside

> clapboard. Assuming that I open the wall and

> confirm there is no electric, is it safe to fill

> that with cellulose? Any danger of water

> entering the space from spaces in between

> clapboard? (the clapboard looks good from the

> outside, house repaired, recently painted.

>


The bigger danger is that moisture from the house will enter the insulation then condense when it gets cold near the outer wall. Air sealing the cavity will help somewhat. If you could seal up the top and bottom of the cavity with foam or caulk then make sure the wall itself around the basebaord and such is sealed, this will help a lot, but this is always a danger in adding insulation to a home wihtout removing the plaster.

> If

> the pipe is sufficiently spaced in between the

> walls, I could slip a fiberglass shield around

> it, however the pipe is too close to one of the

> walls to do that. I hope the outside wall will

> allow that.


Will the pipe move enough to get fibergalss pipe insulation around it? You are using the thickest insulation you can find, right?

>

> More of your thoughts please...

> This has been extremely helpful...