looking for correct t-stat

steancrazed

I was till recently lutzsteam..but now have a new name,same problem. OK my round honey-well w/mercury was thrown out by the mechanic who put a april-air non-programmable t-stat in for my 6 year old Utica Peg 2 pipe steam boiler,(it replaced the original coal?oil?gas huge red boiler(a wonderful intimitating huge scary thing)  also cleaned the system.my problem is, it gets suffocating hot, then too cold in between. Utica recommended white rogers non programmable T-stat for hydraulic cycling,others TH5110 1 cycle p/h,honeywell a T87k1007.....Please,what is best? I just spend over a $100 on the april-air one. thanks everyone. Never mind that all my steam-trapps no doubt are shut,dont think anyone even peeked at the main vents (I live her over 30 years and just read "so you have steam-heat by Dan H. and am really obsessed. pls consider, i am an old female,cant do the tools but i have to know whats what because no heating-man seems to know all that much.everyone tells me something else. thanks again

nicholas bonham-carter

give the lady a pipe wrench!

joking aside, i bet that you will be able to do a few things by learning here, such as cleaning the sight-glass, adjusting the pressure, and of course directing the steam tech to do the right thing whenever he is needed!

honeywell now make a round, no mercury thermostat, which has setting switches for the type of system it runs. check at the big box store, and look on the box for "steam" setting information.

it would not be programmable, but the feeling here is that setbacks will not save energy.

of all the things one can be obsessed with, steam is one of the best!--nbc

danoer1

setbacks will not save energy

can you explain this concept to me?

nicholas bonham-carter

setbacks and savings

if you visualise the thermostat as being like the cruise-control on your car, you can see that the constant speed it maintains provides the most economical fuel use, as it avoids hard acceleration.

in a boiler, the effort it make to recover say 10 degrees is like the needless acceleration of the driver. this recovery may well happen at the same time as the lowest nighttime temperature of the day! do a search here for "setback", and you will have several hours of interesting reading. naturally, a setback of several days while you are away will save fuel, whereas one of a few hours will not.

the most fuel efficient boiler is one which is one with a well maintained burner, with insulated piping, using pure water, with capacious main [not radiator] venting, and developing only a few ounces of pressure. --nbc

danoer1

searching for setback info

your analogy makes sense, although every situation is different so I'm reluctant to say no setback is always the way to go. I have 2 degree swing on my t-stat and set the nighttime/time away temp to 55 and the time we are home to 66. The house virtually never cools down to make the furnace kick on with the 55 degree setting. So my analysis is as follows: If I kept the house at 66 from 11 pm until 5 am (when it is normally off) then how many times and for how long would the heat kick on to keep it at the 66 setting (don't know the exact answer to that), and how would that compare to the 1 hour or so that it takes to bring the house back up to 66. Since the gas to the boiler fires at the same rate whenever it kicks on (unlike the acceleration analogy), then it is simply a time issue, no?

jpf321

how long

is your normal 64-> 68 cycle? with a 2deg swing your t-stat is going on at 64 and off at 68..so how long is that cycle normally? what is the coolest temp you observe before morning recovery to 66?