New one on me

Steamhead (in transit)

I wouldn't try that either. No contractor's liability lawyer is that good. And a surprising amount of old piping I've seen wasn't properly reamed either.

It's possible to run a steam main tight against the ceiling without pitch if every runout comes off the bottom, and each riser heel drips to the wet return. This way, every runout leaving the main is also a drip, and condensate cannot collect in the main. Somewhere I have a Dead Men's Book that discusses this.

"Steamhead"

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Steve Ebels_3

I spoke with a prospective customer the other day who was referred by a rep. I'm the third guy in the equation at this point. The customer has a large old 3 story house with CI rads on a steam system. He informed me that the boiler was piped totally wrong and they just want to replace it to gain some efficiency and get rid of some of the piping in the basement. I suggested refurbing the shteeem but that was a definite NO.

So, back to the thing that has me puzzled. Apparently one of the contractors priced a complete repipe using copper to the existing rads. (the customer would not consent to a pressure test)The other contractor was going to run pex to the rads off a homerun style manifold system. But here's what has me scratching my noggin. The contractor suggesting pex was/is going to use the old steam piping as a chase to get to each rad. By that I mean cutting off the iron pipe and running the pex inside of it up to each rad. (I'm assuming this was two pipe steam) I've never heard of this being done and though I thought of it once or twice, I always considered it to risky in the long run. Sounds like a higher than normal probability for leaks caused by chaffing and rubbing due to pex movement inside the old piping.

Has anyone ever done this and what results have you had?