Steam heat

Charlie_19

Recently, I purchased an old farm house and upgraded the windows, doors and insulation. The heat is a single pipe steam heat system.
The problem is, the house is now more energy efficient than when the boiler was installed (@ 1950)and may be too big. Now, when the heat is needed, the boiler only needs to come on for a short time to heat up the down stairs and the upstairs radiators don't get hot. I changed the down stairs radiators vents to the adjustable and put them at the lowest position. I also removed the vents on the upstairs radiators, that seemed to help some. The rooms at the end of the house get very little heat.
To verify the system works, I turned the thermostat up to 80, the upstairs gets heat, so the system works, just isn't on long enough. Any thoughts?

[Deleted User]

You may want to look for and replace any main air vents. if those are bad the air has to vent though the rads and can slow down how fas the far rads heat up.

rich on heat

I'd strongly suggest you get Dan's books (At the bottom of this page - "A Steamy Deal").They are easy reading and tell you everything you need to know about steam systems. Every owner of a steam system should get them.

I played around for years trying to get my one pipe steam system working properly. I just recently came across this site and Dan's books. At that time I was about ready to give up and chuck the whole system. With a few adjustments, a couple of new parts + some insulation, I now having it running well. One of the biggest things I learned from reading Dan's books was that a lot of my concepts about steam were wrong. Several heating men said I needed to raise the pressure in my system when in fact I needed to lower it. I did lower`it and changed the vents and now all my radiators work..some of which haven't worked for 20+ years!

Phil_17

paraphrasing from Dan's books

Turn down the pressure.

Vent the mains quickly.

Insulate the mains.

Almost everyone is sceptical when told that these are the keys to making a steam system work well, but once you take the time to try them you will become a believer.

Yes, the insulation can look like an expensive proposition, but trust the people here and do it. It makes a gigantic difference in how well a system can work (it is especially good at getting steam out to far reaching rooms which "never heat").

-phil

mark ransley

Leaving no vents in a radiator blow out steam and make the boiler need to replace that water with cold oxgenated water, its hard on the boiler as it leaves crud in the bottom and a big waste of money putting back in cold water. The main vents may be bad, im sure you can balance the system with vents so it works. On some hard to heat radiators I use Vari Vent I think is the spelling, its a small thing about 1" high and round like Nickle size and adjustable, and I have had to add a second vent sometimes.I hear the books sold here are very good, and I need one too.