All my steam vents hiss

Bob W._3

Steve Garson_2

All my steam vents hiss

I feel embarassed that I can't figure out how to solve my problem. New steam boiler: WM SGO-4. Installed per specs with extra 4-inches for the header. All pipes insulated. Mains vented with two Gorton #2 vents.

When the boiler builds up steam, the vents on almost every radiator start hissing once the pressure rises above 1/2-psi. The vents are Gortons. When I unscrew the vent, there is a some water in them

Any tips? My wife is telling me that I should have converted to hot water, since a plumber friend told her that. I have to show her that this can be fixed.

Help!

J.C.A._3

Steve,

Have the installer come back and flush the boiler and RETURNS!!! It takes quite a while but it's worth it.

Cutting oils, pipe dope and all sorts of other nasties will find their way into a new system and need to be flushed out. Have them make sure the wet returns are also flowing freely back to the boiler return. Good luck. Chris

Steve Garson_2

Chris:

The installed cleaned the boiler with TSP and flushed it. My instinct was just as you suggested. I've cleaned the boiler twice with TSP, each time skimming the boiler for an hour and then draining it. Then I skimmed it for 45 minutes each of three weekends. Finally, I gave in and added KEK to see if that would help.

Should I be patient and just repeat this process a few more times?

J.C.A._3

Steve,

Water in the vents leads me 2 ways. Either the radiators aren't pitched well enough OR the return is plugged with "stuff", and not letting the condensate back to the boiler fast enough.

Just for S&G's, what did the previous system consist of ?
I'm thinking ....some old HUGE boiler that made steam at the rate of the big dig in Boston.

Now you've got a "flash" boiler. This puppy makes steam in minutes, not hours...and that is the big difference. The old style was to make steam slow and steady. Now , we're trying to get it there as fast as possible, and sometimes it takes a while to rid the old piping of all of the slag and rust that the nice,DRY steam rids it of and and carries away.... from within the system itself.

Dry steam has a way of flaking off lots of stuff that the old "percolating boiler" made happen during the years it was in service. That stuff finds its way into the returns and can act as a kind of check valve in them.It will hold back the condensate while making steam, and let it flow back during off periods if they're long enough.I've found quite a few returns that seemed to be plugged up with a sandy looking rust.Once I got rid of it, the system returns to the way it's supposed to run. Just my obsevances over the years. Chris

Steve Garson_2

Good suggestions. Sounds like I need to do some more draining and cleaning. Do you think a boiler cleaner like the Rhomer products will make the job easier than TSP?

Or should I just be draining the boiler and return, refilling, let it run a day and then repeating the process?
Or do it repeatedly over the course of a few hours? What would you do?

Steve Garson_2

The old system was a 70 year old converted coal boiler. Yes, it took 40 minutes to make steam versus ten minutes. The system was as quiet as can be. All the radiators are pitched correctly. The water level in the boiler rises to the normal level pretty fast after a steam cycle, so the condensate is getting back without a problem.

Steve Garson_2

One more thing: when the boiler was installed, I noticed that the the wet return was very corroded. I flushed it out with pressurized water, so the condensate would flow. Is this the cause of my problem? Should these be replaced even though they don't leak?

How can I really get these clean when I can only fill them and drain them with the boiler?

J.C.A._3

You Think !

If the return is coming from more than one pipe...one may have more "stuff" in it than the other.

Most systems I look at have more than 1 feed and ALL come back to 1 return....eventually.

The longer ones that come together at some point before the hartford loop are the ones I see causing the most problems on new installs.

Look at your system and think about that.

I quote our host...."The one eyed man is KING in the land of the blind".

I knew that your system was converted from a simple and slow one to a new and fast one...This is what separates the listeners from the thinkers. Too much thinking ends up making no sense. The dead men knew what to do. They just didn't pass it on fast enough.(Thanks Dan!) Chris

Steve Garson_2

Yes, one of my return is worse than the other. One dry return leads to a wet-return, which is real corroded. The other return is a dry-return that leads right to the boiler before dropping. So there is only one corroded return. A total of around 25 feet of piping.

Ryan_10

The obvious EASY solution...

would be to keep the PSI lower than 1/2 through whatever method necessary. Changing the anticipator should take care of it. You'd probably have to cut back on your cycle time to do it and live with higher fuel bills, but at least the wife won't have to listen to noise while you're working out the kinks to get at the root of the problem.

Steve Garson

Tonight I'm installing a L408A Vaporstat to limit the pressure to a lower level, which should help. But there is something else going on that I need to address.

Dean_7

vents

If you don't already have them buy "We Got Steam Heat" and "The Lost Art of Steam Heating". From one homeowner to another if you have steam heat you need these books.

Steve Garson_2

Just installed the Vaporstat. Set it at 4oz cut-in and 8 oz cut-out. All the whistling has stopped. I assume there must be something not right to need this, but it's quiet as can be and all the radiators get hot.

Now I just have to figure out how to get one single radiator to stop inhaling after the steam cycle ends.