varivalve spews water, uneven heating

alittlecold

Hi all. I recently moved to a 2nd floor apartment with single pipe steam heat. The radiators in the front of the apt have not been heating up very fast and are really, really loud (knocking) for about 15 minutes each morning when the system first goes on. I have pitched both radiators towards the pipe and that has helped a bit with the noise but hasn't solved it. In terms of the heat, I got our landlord's permission to install varivalves on the 2 radiators in question. I put them on last night. This morning when the system came on, one of the radiators, which had always dripped a little through the old valve (size C) literally spewed water thru the varivalve. I had to hold a bucket in front of the valve and filled nearly half the bucket. That radiator did heat up faster, and once it got fully hot, after about 10 min, everything was fine. The other radiator dripped a little through the varivalve but maybe only 1/8 of cup.



What would be causing this? Should I put the old valves back? The landlord said that she had new pipes put in the front part of the house last spring, and that this is the first time she's ever had much radiator noise or other problems. I'm wondering if they might have messed up the system at that time.



I'm guessing she needs to call a good plumber ASAP, but I wanted to get some advice so that I can tell whether her plumber is on the right track, and/or if there's anything else that I can do. Also, do you think all that water ruined the varivalves?



Thanks to all of you for this great site...!

David Nadle

It's not the valves.

Sounds like your building's boiler is making wet steam. I would ask the landlord if, after the steam mains were modified last spring, the boiler was fired and then skimmed. It may be that pipe cutting oil has been washed back into the boiler, causing surging. If you look at the boiler while it's firing you might see the waterline bouncing up and down excessively, or water streaming down from the top of the gauge glass, or many droplets of water in the upper part of the gauge glass (it should be dry above the water line). These would be signs you need to get the boiler skimmed.