single pipe steam to hot water system

acjerry

I have a single pipe system and im converting to water,my air vent is in the middle of the radiater for steam application.we are going to a two pipe water system.how can i remove air out of the system without drilling can i use a spiral air vent?

nicholas bonham-carter

steam to hot water

i have seen the tops of each radiator section drilled, and tapped for vent screws. you really need all the radiator inside to be in contact with the water, so you can use all the btu's of the water. as it is, your radiators could be under sized for hot water, whose temperature is much less than steam.

 in addition, you are subjecting a system used to 3 psi, to 30 psi, so bearing in mind all the radiators may leak, you could just order new ones for a more predictable result. let us know how it turns out, and whether you would ever do it again.--nbc

Jamie Hall

I do hope

that there is a very very good reason -- indeed, overwhelming reason -- for doing this.  Converting two pipe steam is a bear, and I can't recommend it; converting one pipe steam?  I wouldn't even think of it as an option!

Brian_19

Tapping radiator

It is very easy to drill and tap the radiator for proper air venting on a hot water system. There is usually a spot on the top part of the radiator that has a dimple in the casting for a vent. A sharp bit will drill the iron quickly.

 Also, I have converted many radiators from steam to water and have not had one leak. I have no idea why the same few people try to scare everyone who wants to convert radiators to hot water. I just converted a one pipe steam to hot water and the system works great! I ran 1/2 and 3/8 pex to 10 cast iron radiators  connected to a mod/con boiler. Very simple very efficient and NO LEAKS!!

Jamie Hall

Since I am one of those same few people

who don't advocate the change, perhaps a word as to why.  It's unnecessary.  Simple as that.  It is not that hard, nor expensive, to get a steam system -- even a badly mangled one -- to work as it was intended, and I just plain simple prefer the elegance of restoration.  Don't know about the other guys...

Steamhead

Brian, you may not have seen a disastrous conversion yet

but I sure have. That's why I advise against them, also why my company does not perform these conversions and does not touch a system someone else has converted. There are just too many things to go wrong. The only ones who win in cases like this are the liability lawyers who salivate over these cases.



No leaks in old piping and radiators you've tried to convert? Really? All the ones I've seen around here have had constant problems with leaks. Why tempt fate? Besides, as Jamie says, it's not necessary in the first place.



And as for tapping those radiators, are we sure they can be used for hot-water in the first place? If there's no "boss" that can be drilled and tapped at the top of the end sections, chances are they're steam-only radiators. Oops- can't use them after all.......

Timco

converting radiators

I have several salvaged radiators that were steam (no top pipe) and all sections were drilled & tapped for vents. Looks less than desirable, but those work. Then I bought a radiator that has both top & bottom pipes and could be used for either, and SEVERAL sections leaked. It was used on a one-pipe system. I had to hook it up to an electric water heater and run Hurculese boiler solder through it for a day until it sealed up. Going on 2 years + now with no re-leaks. Radiator was well worth the effort...an entire system from a 1-pipe setup? NO WAY!!! 1-pipe can be dialed in very well.



Tim



Tim

Brian_19

It works

First off if any of you do not want to perform a conversion to hot water then fine, don't, but please stop with the nonsense of radiators leaking and the stupid comments of lawsuits. Like I said I have converted many radiators to hot water over the years with no problems.

 Second  a mod/con boiler with an indirect water heater connected to radiators is one of the most efficient systems out there. On all jobs I do a complete heat loss and the rads are always large enough to work with hot water. Most times I run a max temp of 160 with a 30 to 40 delta T ,very efficient.

 Third if this is what a homeowner wants what do you care you're not responsible for anything. The same people have some sort of bizarre fetish with steam and get personally offended if someone wants to remove it. 

Steamhead

Not just radiators

but pipes as well. You obviously have not seen a conversion gone horribly wrong. We have seen a bunch. If you had, you'd change your tune, and you'd understand why we don't touch them.



And if the radiator sizes are marginal for hot-water, you lose whatever advantage a mod-con offers since the system will have to run at higher than condensing temperatures much of the time. Bye-bye, promised higher efficiency.



Lastly, a true professional doesn't always do whatever is asked. If we have a customer who wants something done that's obviously a bad idea, we don't do it. If they want it done badly enough they can find someone else, who they will likely turn around and sue when it damages the building or doesn't work as promised. Yet there are still those who think "if this is what a homeowner wants what do you care you're not responsible for anything". You were the last one to touch it, therefore you are responsible.



Really, you can't make this up- it happens every day. If it hasn't happened to you or someone you know yet, it will.

Charlie from wmass

Brian I am sorry you have not had the pleasure yet.

But I can say I as have many others seen what does go wrong with these conversions. With the current boiler tech out there why go hot water when steam can run with in a few AFUE's of the steam? If the heat bill is $2 k a year and you go from 64 to 86 percent on fuel efficiency you save a lot. But if you figure the cost of going from 86 to maybe on a really good day getting 90 is it worth the risk and cost? But have your fun and keep your premiums paid up because it is not a matter of if but of when one goes wrong.

Brian_19

Still works

Listen, we can debate this for weeks with the same conclusion. Your obviously single minded in this subject. You just can't accept the fact that there are thousands of steam to hot water conversions out there and working fine. Your mind is already made up that the rads will leak and it is a bad idea, with no on site knowledge of the particular job in question. I'm not saying that there is not a potential for a problem, but it's not right to say that all conversions will result in disaster. You just don't know that from reading a message board post and it's unfair of you to say.

 As for why replace a steam system. The last one I converted for the following reasons 1. The 175,000 BTU  boiler had to be replaced(boiler was right size for load). 2. Chimney was bad new steamer would have to be power vented. 3. All wet returns were shot needed replacement. 4. Homeowner wanted boiler relocated from its current location in middle of basement to rear of basement steam mains had to be altered. 5. Two rads on first floor had to be relocated for remodeling, more piping alterations. 6. Homeowners did not want exposed steam risers to second floor rads. 7. $1500.00 tax credit sweetened the deal .

The new system consist of Triangle Tube 110 gas boiler with 40 gal indirect. I ran 1/2 and 3/8 pex to all rads from a manifold near boiler(all home runs). Design temp is 160  at 0  with 35 degree delta T. Most of the time in normal weather it is sending out 130 to 140 degree water with 100 to 110 return temps, lots on condensate. The boiler usually modulates at around 50%. This is a very efficient system and the owners love it.

And Charlie I am having fun, my premiums are paid up, and I am sure I will  sleep very well tonight knowing your concerned thank you.

Steamhead

I wouldn't say

that Charlie, Jamie, Timco and I are "single-minded" or have a "bizarre fetish" when it comes to steam. Rather, we've learned how to make it efficient and comfortable, saving our customers lots of money in the process (without any "help" from the government I might add). I do, however, think those terms of yours would apply to those who advocate ripping all steam systems out.



As far as I know, there has never been a scientific, apples-to-apples comparison of the relative efficiencies of transporting BTUs by steam as opposed to water in a heating system. Every "case study" I've seen involved a steam system on the verge of total failure from knuckleheading and neglect, to a brand-new hot-water system. This has never been a valid comparison and never will be. Oh, and how long will those shiny new mod-cons last if they get the same lack of care the steam systems got? That will be interesting to see.



So Brian, when was the last time you encountered a steam system and didn't pressure the owner to rip it out?

Timco

Brian...

Just because you are not familiar with steam and do not wish to educate yourself so you can actually work on a steam system rather than just convert (ruin) them, don't call my personal experience with leaking steam rads nonsense. That is my experience, and if someone comes here for real opinions they should hear the bad, not just the good...should all steam systems be converted over a few bad valves and a bad pressuretrol / dirty return? Take the time to learn the system and save the customer thousands they don't need to spend...



Tim

Brian_19

steam is good

Hey I don't`advocate ripping all steam systems out. Quite honestly I love piping steam boilers. In the last 20 years I have only converted about 10 systems over to hot water for various reasons and I normally install about 7 to 10 steamers per year. I am only stating my personal experience with hot water conversions.Many of you claim that all of the rads will leak. All I'm saying is that I never had a rad leak in all of the conversions I have done. Now that's not to say the possibility does not exist form this to happen, but any part of the heating system can fail prematurely.

 As far as efficiency goes I will not get in to a debate over this, but what I can say is that when replacing an 82% gas hot water boiler with a Mod/con I am seeing a 30% reduction in consumption. This is a fact.

Timco

Time

How many years (decades) do you suppose it would take to pay back going from 82% steam to a mod con hot water system with 30% savings annually on gas? Especially given the expense of going from one -pipe steam to a 2-pipe hot water...including the damage to the house that would be needed? If it is a historic home, can you imaging the damage to original mouldings & features that would be needed to do this?



Again, many opinions here but I agree with all fellow pros who are strongly against converting.  It needs to be all or nothing if that is really how the customer wants it done.



Tim

Brian_19

Read Post

Read "Converting a Church to Hydro HE from steam" post.

I guess they don't know what their talking about either.

Timco

convertion

do you suppose it was 1-pipe to begin with like in this post? if he had posted regarding his conversion I likely would have voted against it as well. not just picking on this guy and stand behind my opinion that conversion should be a real last resort as I see it. I'm done here...



Tim

Steamhead

They don't say

what condition the steam was in. Neither have you. Without that information,  figures mean nothing. You end up sounding like a used-car salesman, and this turns people off real fast.



Given the typical lack of maintenance we find in churches, it probably wasn't in very good shape. 

Charlie from wmass

I install all types of hydronic based heat

I am not a die hard lover of steam and I have seen systems that simply were not worth saving. In these cases often the radiators were also in poor shape. I think the anti conversion mind set is based on the jobs we have come across. My own church switched to hot water from steam. Is the heat better? no it is colder. are the heat bills lower?  They are, but turning down the thermostat and tuning the system would have also saved them on the heat bill. The thing I think of is even the dual use radiators are subject to more corrosion on steam than if they had been used for hot water from day one. The total lack of maintenance on steam systems that get them to the point of needing to be converted also leads me to not trust the old radiators. There is room out there for people to convert steam to hot water and there is work to keep steam as steam.  Just think if your car was built 90 years ago would you hook a turbo to it and race it on the weekends? Sure you could do it many times with no issue. Lots of guys do it so it must be the right thing to do? Right?

heatboy_30

Seems awfully expensive.......

...... to do all of the labor just to check if the system will be water tight and hold 30 PSIG, even if the radiators can be used for hot water. Who pays to see if it will even work at $100.00+ per hour?



The labor involved to switch, even if the radiators are big enough to carry the load once you slash the output, seems enormous. Just to clean the system and keep all of the crud away from the new hot water boiler would take at least a day. I'm not saying it can't be done, because I have seen it, but if the system is in poor enough condition that swapping is considered, I would think removing it all and starting over makes more sense.

Mark Eatherton

Not advocating....

Just educating.



Some wise cracker out there has developed a fitting specifically designed for converting a one pipe steam radiator to a 2 pipe hydronic heating system....



If you can imagine it, it CAN be done :-)



http://www.oventrop-na.net/brochure/TRV_Bro_R26-0806.pdf



ME

Steamhead

But it still won't work

on some radiators, no matter how hard you imagine. If they don't have nipples connecting the tops of the sections, that Oventrop fitting won't work with them. 

ScottMP

Used car saleman ??

Scaring a customer into not improving their heating system and sticking with 1920's technology sounds more like snake oil salesmen than used car salesmen.

Telling your customer it can't be done simple to justifey your business stikes me as odd.



Scott

Mark Eatherton

Very true...

and I suspect that those columnar type of radiators are an East Coast situation, because in my thirty plus years of boiler spelunking here in Colorado, I have seen ZERO of that type of radiator.



Not to say that they don't exist, but not in my travels.



Also, I think the name calling needs to be eliminated, or this post will probably be eliminated, which would be a shame... We are all here to learn, not to offend.



Everyone has their position, and I think we are capable of explaining our positions without resorting to name calling and such.



JMHO



ME

Mark Eatherton

Frankly Frank....

We (heating contractors as a whole) expose ourselves to the potential of a lawsuit EVERY DAY. As soon as you leave your office, you are a liability to yourself. If your cell phone rings, and you take a quick glance to see who it is, and you run over or into some poor person in the wrong place at the wrong time, BINGO, you're being sued.



If you install a boiler, perfectly to code, and the HO and his weekend warrior brother in law install a GenAire Grill, that causes YOUR boiler to back draft and cause a CO situation, who do you think is going to get sued?



If your perfectly installed hydronic radiant floor heating system gets a nail hit from the original hardwood floor finisher, and it takes YEARS for the nail to rust off, and causes MILLIONS of dollars worth of damages, who do you think is going to get sued?



If you install or rehab a steam system into perfect original condition, except for the condensate return mains, and while the family is gone to Disney World for 2 weeks, and the condensate return decides to cut loose, and the make up automatically replenishes water and floods the whole basement, who gets sued?



Even in the above scenario, if you DIDN'T put an auto feed on the system, and it eventually goes down on LWCO, and the whole house freezes and causes hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of water damage due to freezing and bursting potable water lines, who gets sued?



Each and every one of these scenarios happens every day. Just because you've converted a system from steam to hydronic does not increase your liability, any more than keeping it steam lessens it. If that is what and how you justify doing what it is that you do, then so be it. But to paint all converters with a big wide brush of increased liability is unfair, and unproven.



Trust me, been there, seen that, and had to testify in court over it.



'Tis a litiguous society in which we live.



If you're afraid you might get run over crossing the street, then stay in the house...



ME

Timco

Who is the used car / snake oil salesman exactly?

For the record, not many here said can't. Most said shouldn't or wouldn't. The fact that these systems are converted can be used to make the same argument that the customer's best interest was not served by converting when simply cleaning and maintaining the steam would have been best and cheapest in the long run. The last time I checked, the 1920's technology was still being used in hospitals and is very comfortable when maintained properly. Maybe we should discuss politics next so we can be more civil?



Tim