Steam Heating Help NJ

warren_4

My wife and I just purchased an old home that has steam heat. I had a steam guy look at it, but threw him out when he said to adjust the pressure up to fix some of my problems.

My problems are that their is a tremendous amount of air noise coming out of the radiators and spitting. There also is a major intake of air when the system shuts off. I have changed some of the vents out, pitched the radiators correctly, and began insulating the pipes...and the problem still persists. From what I have read it sounds like a main vent issue. It appears that there are some main vents, but 3 are on return pipes and two other runs have none. I've attached pictures. If anyone knows how I can fix this myself or a good steam guy in the morristown area I would really appreciate. I'm pretty handy and given this is one of many home projects for this old house we purchased, anything that I can tackle myself I want to try. Thanks!

JohnNY

Hmmm.

Builder's boiler to begin with, don't put any significant money into it.
Bad boiler piping.
Inadequate vents at ends of mains connected by bad nipple work.
Boiler water looks horrible.


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Ken_40

Warren,

It doesn't look that bad to me...

A few dumb things like the vent pipe being bent to form a water trap is a no-no. Changing it out will improve the efficiency by a very small margin. Too small to justify a switch now, unless the boiler's leaking internally.

Stop with all the chemicals! Clean it with TSP after rinsing all that junk outta there and rinse it again. Let's see what happens when all the junk's out of the water.

If that fails, call Palmer in Clark. They do a lot of work in Morristown.

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David Nadle

Some things you can try...

1. Get the boiler water clean.

2. If your problems are with some radiators but not all, double check radiator pitch at each section with a short level. Mr. Holohan wasn't kidding about using a 6" level. I probably threw out a couple of perfectly good vents because they were hissing and spitting. I'd checked the radiator with a 24" level and a 9" level, everything was fine. Turns out my radiator was pitched great except for the last section, which somehow had bent the other way. After adding enough extra pitch to get over that "hump" all my problems went away. Actually, I don't even know where you can get a 6" level but I improvised with a small combination square.

That looks like quite a large boiler. How many radiators do you have? It also doesn't look that old. Unfortunately it's piped without swing joints and with the takeoff between the two risers and I'm sure with other problems my novice eyes can't see, but it may last you a long time. I wish you luck working out all the quirks.

Steamhead (in transit)

Boiler piping

is totally wrong. Not only is the takeoff between the boiler risers but the pipe size is way too small. You're probably getting some very wet steam. That boiler requires either a 2-1/2" or 3" header, depending on its size, and it looks big enough to need a 3-incher. You'll never know how the rest of the system will perform until that boiler is piped correctly.

Here are a couple of pics of a similar boiler installation I worked on about four years ago. It uses a drop header which helps make very dry steam. The plugged tee was for a proposed addition.

I'll second the Palmer Heating recommendation.

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Chas_2

located in nj

Warren i am located in bergen county nj and mainly work on steam ,hydronic and a/c if you cannot locate any one take a look at your system you may contact me at RDEUZA@aol.com and i will send you my telephone #,Looks like a edr count of your raditors for starters to make sure your not boiler is not to oversized ,then a good look at your near boiler piping and vents and your pressure troll seting .Here's a photo of oneof my recent steam boiler replacement job you peace and good luck clammy

stevenyc_2

My system does pretty much the same thing. After warm up the system short cycles 3-4 minutes on and 1-2 minutes off. A few minutes after t-stat is satisfied, the radiators make a loud hissing sound from sucking air back in.

I have read on The Wall that it is a good idea to change the pressuretrol to a vaporstat, but I wonder if doing that will make matters worse since the vaporstat will now measure the pressure in ounces and then the on cycle will be even shorter than the 3-4 minutes. Wouldn't the vaporstat make short-cycling worse? Thanks for any help.

DanHolohan

Nice work.

How about taking a Find a Professional ad. That would be fair to those who advertise here and help support the site.

Chas_2

sorry dan

In the future i won't post any concact info again very sorry ,i have a few reason not to run a FAP and i'll keep then to myself sorry again it won't happen again peace and good luck clammy