It's done! Thanks for the radiator help!

Al Hendrickson_12

Well, I finally got the cracked steam radiator in my kitchen replaced. If y'all remember, I bought an old hot water rad, sawed and chiseled out the old reducers per your recommendations. I had it sandblasted and painted it with several spray cans of white engine paint. Wow, even a small radiator sure has a lot of surface area!

I took the recommendation of a participant and bought a new 1 1/2" angle valve, which was a good thing. The old valve finally came off in pieces after considerable time spent with a hacksaw, hammer, and chisel. (Thankfully I had access to some large taps and dies to clean up old threads all along the way.)

I did have to extend the riser pipe by 2", and didn't want to disturb the asbestos insulation by replacing it. What I did was to take a steel pipe coupling and tap both ends deeper so the old riser and a new close nipple would just about touch each other when tightened. It worked fine, although the valve assembly now looks kind of like a miniature fire hydrant . . . but somewhat less goofy now that I camouflaged the assembly with brass hammertone spray paint.

Anyway, thanks to all for your guidance! . . . I'm sure it saved me many hours of struggle. It gives me an appreciation for what you pros must go through all the time!

I do have one question though. The replacement radiator was pretty mudded up inside. I did my best to loosen up and remove what I could . . . tipping, rolling, scraping with a long rod, beating with a rubber mallet, vacuuming, etc. I got out maybe a pound of rusty, clumpy crud before it stopped coming, but I'm sure the steam cleaning it's getting now will loosen up some more. What should I do? I'm planning to blow down the boiler a few times over the next couple of weeks. Anything else I should do?

Dry Steam

skim, skim, skim

Skim and clean. Can't be said enough. But give your system time to work that radiator.

Al Hendrickson_14

Oh?

Thanks, Scot! I guess that means that there is at least one more fitting I'll have to remove without breaking anything expensive. The skim ports on the boiler have pipe plugs right in the cast iron boiler section. Maybe I can just remove the plug at the end of the pipe that the Pressuretrol syphon is mounted on. All I'll need to do is create an opening right at the surface so that any oil or other scum can float out, right. Basically, I just keep the boiler warm and let a trickle of water overflow for a while and carry floating stuff with it.

I'm thinking there must be some surfactant I could add to the boiler water that when heated just below boiling would emulsify any oil so it could be drained out the bottom with a change of water, and might clean up sediment as well. . . maybe TSP or something like that. I'll have to review that part of the Lost Art book again and see what I find.

I did drain a half a bucket of steaming boiler water tonight, and it wasn't too filthy . . . a couple of small crumbs of rusty crud were in the bucket, and the water was brown at first, but at least it's not like the nasty swamp water I kept draining out after we moved in last fall.

The water in the sight glass is pretty steady during steaming as-is and I don't want to mess things up. Maybe a few blow-downs will do it.

kpc_40

where are...

some pictures? We want to see this baby....kpc