F &T,s or loop seal ?

clammy

I was recently called to take a look at a one pipe steam system for a 2 story apartment building ,which is suffering from banging splitting vents ,upon looking in the basements (a few seperate basement and through some garages )besides lowing the pressure troll i noticed that there where drip on some of the mains and at the end of the mains also usually these are dripped into a wet return but some one had installed f and t traps at wheer these where clearly ties into a gravity return that is not below the water line of the boiler ,the piping for the boiler was not the greatest or even close except the near boiler piping was the minium of the boiler manafactures specs ,the original installers did not leave any info on the boiler it's a burnham i believe model 1105 ,650 ,btu now here's my real question is ,why the f and t instead of just a loop seal dropping 30 inches down and comming back into the dry return ,there,s some mid cycle banging and from the look of it the mains are insulated but it appears that the mains need to be re hung in some spots ,but these drip that where either removed or plugs or f and t installed ,i never really ran into single pipe sysytemn with f and t most steam mains end into a dry or wet reurn ,it's hard to tell excatly what was done being theree appears to be no patching of lower holes from one basement to the next ,there has been some of the wet ,dry return that has been replaced with copper ,but those f and t make no sense to me also the original installation company has not been back and was sued by the landlord ,to me it appears the boiler is sized correctly or at least to the load ,the near boiler issues where ones of the original installer back pitching the 3 main back to the boilerheader the near boiler piping was not a thing of beauty they did do a small drop and used 2 3inch taps into a 4 header picking up 2 ,3 mains and 1 2 1/2 main the equilizer was only 2 inch witha 1 1/2 hartford loop ,this one kinda s stumped me except i only spent about an hour checking the sysytem out peace and good luck clammy

clammy

also wondering

also wondering if it's a possibablity that they turned the former wet return into a dry ,but even if the original boiler water level was higher it could not have been much higher espically since the cielings are very low and from the looks of thing s the original install was very tight on there a dimension the worst part will be looking for thatlowest carring steam main peace and good luck clammy