New steam heating system install from ground up

gerry gill

steam installers club..glad it all worked out for you..how about some radiator pics..

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V8toilet

New steam heating system install from ground up

My brother bought a house that was a bank repossession. The old Burnham V7 series boiler in it cracked like so many of them had so he needed a new heating system and we didn’t want to go with oil heat anyway due to the volatility of oil prices. Since he was doing so many improvements to the home including insulating all the walls and attic the old system would be just too big and inefficient to just replace the old 390 sq ft steam boiler. The radiation was over sized for the home even with no insulation and none of the old radiators matched each other from room to room. I decided this was my perfect opportunity to attempt my first steam boiler installation and to revamp the old system in the process.

I did a heat loss calculation using Slat fins program and an outside design temperature of 0 degrees. We then bought all new Governdale Gov free thin tube cast iron radiators that fit the heat loss of each room and scrapped the massive old radiators. The new radiators were physically less than half the size of the old cast iron thin tube radiators. We also bought a new Weil-McLain EG 35 gas boiler that most closely fit the radiation including the pickup factor. The steam system is a counterflow steam system.

So through the summer I work on his system on nights and weekends a little at a time. I used a nice 3” riser and header and ran two 2” risers from that up and over the steam mains and connected them to the top of the main just like in the boiler manual. I then connected 1” drips to the end of each main and ran those back to the boiler before the Hartford loop. The steam velocity will be nice and slow going through the 3” riser and header so that any water droplets that get up into that 3” pipe can fall back against the flow of steam and not get carried into the system. This accomplishes the same thing as those large steam chests in the old snow men type boilers that helped separate the steam from the water.

We also added vents to each steam main and at the end of each long run as well and installed enough vents in each one to handle the air volume in that pipe. I did this by removing the old steam main section and installing a new section with a 3/4*2*2 tee to accommodate the 8” nipple for the main vents. I used the balancing chart that I bought from Dan’s website and used Maid-O-Mist vents to balance the system. We topped the system off with a nice Honeywell RTH 7400 thermostat and 1” fiberglass insulation for all the steam pipes. I also forgot to mention that I did hire a plumber to install the gas line and hook up the exhaust to the chimney. He also hooked up the copper water feed line to the boiler and yes we did pull all required permits and had everything inspected.

So a couple of weeks ago I fired up the system for the first time. It took only 9 minutes for the boiler to start steaming and only an additional 10 minutes for all the cast iron radiators in the house to get hot. This is from a dead cold start (60 degrees to 215)! The cast iron radiators also all got hot at about the same time and the heat was even, quiet, and just plain nice. It’s amazing how quiet and fast this system is! The only thing on this system that is still original are pieces of the 2”steam mains and the risers to the second floor. Most of this steam system is new and about 1/3 of the pipe is new. I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to Dan Holohan and the people on this forum for all your help and invaluable information. We could have never have done this without your knowledge and support. I have included some pictures of the boiler and piping before we insulated.

Steamhead (in transit)

Now that's a work of art

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V8toilet

Thanks

I'll see if I can get some pictures of the radiators the next time I'm over there; probably when I go to skim the boiler. Picture 139 is a picture of the old Burnham V7 boiler. You can see the bull head tee or lack of a header. That riser is only 2"!

When we were piping the boiler I had my brother wash the oil out of the new pipe and fittings to help make skimming little easier later on.