Steam heater will not heat up

Alexa

Hello everyone I am new to this site and home ownership so please go easy on me. I have a one pipe steam heat system last week my oil company forgot to deliver oil and the tank ran empty which left me with no heat after that issue was fixed all seemed fine untill Monday evening the thermostat temp dropped from 67 (overnight set temp) to a freezing 61...burr! Since then the boiler continues to stay on in hopes to reach it's set temp which I have kicked up to 75(per my oil co). The pipes from floor to ceiling in the house next to the radiator are warm almost hot to the touch but the radiators won't get fully hot and one won't heat up at all. So far this is what I have done
1. Changed all of the air valves.
2. Checked the "pitch" to make sure that the slant was towards the pipe i.e <.
3. Checked the water in the glass level attached to the boiler which is half full...i'm an optimist. And twisted the lower knob attaced to the level which seemed to be fully closed.
4. Hit the darn radiators a million times- although this i'm sure did nothing.

Also important is the fact that I have a 2 family house and my tenants apartment is very warm as is my un-finished basement.

All advice would be greatly appreciated seeing that I am cold and going through oil like water!

Dale

water or air block

Take a look at the books section on this site if you plan to stay in a steam heated house, start with the "We got steam heat!" book. The explanation point in the title is not a typo. A steam system is like a partner relationship, difficult but doable. Well,if you have one boiler, one thermostat and the tenants are ok and the basement is OK and you have changed all the rad vents and I assume made sure the rad valves are all open then I would suggest watching the gauge glass when you flush the low water cut off to see if the level drops, it should. If it doesn't it's big time unsafe, call a pro. Then make sure the pressure control is set to "cut in" at as low as possible and the differential set to 1 or 1 1/2. Then look to the ceiling and see how many main vents you have, I would suspect 2, I think one of them is stuck closed or the pipe to it is full of water that's blocking air from getting out. If you like pipe wrenches and are careful with your teeth the vents can be unscrewed, you should be able to blow through them, the taste is pretty bad. There are some other things that could be wrong but like in Casablanca fist thing is to round up all the usual suspects.

Steamhead (in transit)

If it was working OK before the oil ran out

the burner might not be delivering enough heat to the boiler. Possibly the filter or nozzle is partially clogged. Why not get a real pro to look at it? Try the Find a Professional page of this site.

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Norm Harvey

I agree with steamhead. It could be any number of fuel line issues. Your primary may be in a recycle mode,if your oil filters are clogged. Meaning the clogged filters only allowthe burner to run for short periods of time before too much vacuum builds and the flame becomes unstable and stops completely.

Some burner controls would shut down in safety giving you a no heat condition, while others may keep trying to establish a stable flame indefinately.

Just for kicks if you go to your oil burner, and locate the primary control (standing looking down at the oil burner you will see a square or rectangle box on the right. The manufacturer will probably be honeywell or carlin.

If you can get the model of the control great, if not let us know if it is a black honeywell, a grey honeywell, a black carlin, or a blue carlin control.

In the meantime, you should get a pro there to get things squared away for you. My wanting to know the model of your primary is intellectual curiosity. You need someone that can put his hands on the equipment and fix it.



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Alexa

Thank you Dale, SteamHead and Norm Harvey for all of your great advice. After following much of the advise and leads that you guys provided I finally relented and called the service company again and insisted that they come out. Finally i am back in business! Turns out that the nozzle was clogged so the boiler was unable to produce enough steam to adequatly heat all of the rads on the first floor. Thanks again for all of your help guys.