Short cycling and one pipe steam

ttekushan_3

Does the system heat quickly and completely? If so, you DON'T need more pressure. In the presence of good venting (which you apparently have) and swift heat distribution, the Vaporstat is doing its job.

The only thing worse than short cycling at ounces of pressure is short cycling at pounds of pressure. Honestly, how is that supposed to help matters of efficiency? It doesn't.

If it heats well and is vented properly, then you have too much fire for the load.

How was the boiler sized? By EDR (radiator surface area) plus pick-up factor? Was everyone looking at the edr on the correct style radiator (no offense. I've seen it. viz., tube type radiators have a number of columns even though they're not column type radiators so their edr is different). Based on the input BTU of the old boiler?

Finally, does the water in the sight glass bounce violently? If its bounces a little <1" then oils on the water surface should not be the problem. Besides, the boiler usually shuts on low water in the instance of oil contamination.

Any other clues? Like a photo of the boiler installation including the near boiler piping?

-Terry

Diar

Hi All,

I bought a new boiler ( WM 480 ) last year and have had short cycling problems on pressure since I bought it. To attempt to fix the issue, I have:
- removed any setback from my tstat
- set the vaporstat to its highest setting
- downfired the boiler almost as much as possible ( its correctly sized )
- got multiple gorton #2 vents put on the mains ( correctly sized as well )
- moved the vaporstat to the top of the boiler
- cleaned the system cleaned multiple times

What is making my life very uncomfortable, is that the tech that installed and maintained the system has insisted that I need a pressuretol ( 1.5 lbs ) of pressure to heat my house, since it is large and has lots of piping. However, I insisted on the vaporstat.

At this point my options seem to be:

(a) call my tech back one more time ( he's not going to be happy ), to clean and slightly downfire the system again, in hopes of getting rid of the short cycling.

(b) call my tech back and have him install a pressuretol and up my pressure

(c) get a second opinion / see if somebody else can clean the system better, if that is even possible.

Does anybody have any advice on what to do next?

Can anybody recommend somebody to clean/inspect my system to try to see what is wrong / why my system can't run properly on a vaporstat? I live south of Boston.

Thanks in advance,
Diar