Cut in Pressure on Boiler

ChrisS

My wife and I own a 100 yr + farm house with a one pipe steam system.  Given the age of the house and the number of hack job reonvations that have been done to it over the years, I was looking for a good read to learn more about steam heat.  A friend of mine recently let me borrow 'We got Steam Heat'.  I was fully expecting to learn that my steam system was way out of wack, but to my pleasent surprise that didn't seam to be the case.  That is with a few small, I think, exception.  1) the pig tail on the cut-in cut-out is rotated 90deg from correct (doesn't seam like a deal breaker).  2) the cut-in pressure was at about 2psi., the cut-out was at about .5psi, which from what I gathered was correct.  3) there's not a drop of insulation on the entire  system.  All in all not bad.



After reading the book I imediately turned the cut-in pressure down to around .5 psi.



Now here is the issue.  With the cut-in pressure at .5psi and the cut-out at .5psi as well, the boiler does not turn on even though the thermosat calling for heat?  I've sinse been slowly turning the cut-in pressure up to get the boiler to react.  It's now back to where it was when it started around 2 psi.  The cut-out is still around .5psi.



What gives?

Thanks in advanced,

Chris

jpf321

assuming no mercury....

if your "pressuretrol" or p-trol is not mecury, you don't need to worry about pigtail/p-trol orientation.



assuming you have a spring loaded p-trol (not mercury) .. there is a point where you adjust the screw so much that you actually COMPRESS the spring .. and this will keep the boiler OFF .. you need have the spring slightly extended .. if that means 2 on your gauge, then 2 it is.



normally one scale should be down around 0.5 (being careful not to compress spring) and the other scale (or internal white wheel) should be 1.0



get some 1" thick fiberglass insulation on any pipes you have access to.