Anotherr venting question.

Brad White_202

It does seem that your venting strategy is working for you. As for the gauge not getting above zero, I have a LOT of gauges that do that. :) IOW: May not be a true indicator, but it might.

Now, if you cannot fit Gorton #2s, you might make a Menorah of Gorton #1s instead. Just a thought. I would size them about 3:1.

If there is no practical alternative, you can vent through the last radiator, but what is better is to use that last run-out pipe as the vent instead.

Picture coming out of the floor to the radiator. A tee branches off to serve the radiator using an in-line rather than angle valve. The tee run continues upward to a bushing in which there is a proper vent. There are variations to this, but you get the idea.

Others more knowlegeable may have thoughts on why not vent via the last radiator. I did it on a church building and while not perfect, it did speed things up a good deal to that wing.

Charles W

My two story house has single pipe steam. There is about 60 feet of 2 1/2" insulated main in the basement. It's vented with two Hoffman 75s, which I'm pretty sure are too small. I was going to install a couple of Gorton #2 vents instead of the Hoffmans, but there isn't enough clearance above the main to fit them in.

It just so happens that the last riser on the main connects to an undersized radiator in what was the coldest second floor room. Last winter, I put a Varivalve vent on it, and left it wide open. It's now the first radiator to get hot. The room was somewhat warmer, which is good. As a bonus, the entire system seemed to speed up when starting from cold, and the other radiator vents hissed a lot less. The radiator vents close before the needle on the boiler pressure gage moves off of zero, so the air must be getting pushed out pretty easily.

If I need to make further changes, I'd like to do it before we're too far into the heating season.

Two questions:

1) Based on my pressure observation, is there adequate venting now?

2) As long as I'm not overheating the room, is there a downside to essentially venting the main through the last radiator?

Charles W_2

Thanks, Brad. I thought about teeing in a big vent just like you described. I think I saw something like that in one of Dan H's books once. Where the radiator is located, I didn't like the way it would look.

The two Hoffman 75's are teed together already, so it wouldn't be such a big deal to add another branch or two and add a couple of Gorton #1 vents. It's working OK for now. I'm feeling the pinch from the slow economy, so I'd rather not spend the money if I didn't have to though, unless it will pay back in fuel savings. Maybe I'll poke around on eBay once in a while and see if I can stumble across a bargain.