How often does one clean the return on one pipe steam system?

Joseph_4

I read in one of Dan's steam books that one should clean the return of a steam system regularly. How often is regularly. I have a customer who hasn't done it in 10 years and his system seems to be working fine. He wants to know if he should do it now?

Jamie Hall

Cheer up...

I have a vapour steam system in the building I superintend.  It's two pipe, of course, with wet returns.  So far as I know, the returns have been neither cleaned nor flushed any time in the last 80 years... and it's working fine.  A tad slow on returning the water to the boiler, but not enough to even think about.