to much oil

joe amadio

I have posted a couple of times on this subject.I've gotten some answers and quite a few questions. We are doing a large renovation at this home and over the last several days I've watched and have gone over this steam system very thoroughly. I feel that I know the entire layout and can answer any experts questions on how things are piped out.There is an HB smith 6 section boiler firing at 1.35 gph.It was set up to fire at that rate before we stared. From what I've learned so far it appears to be a two pipe vacuum or vapor system. The supplies run out to feed 3 separate areas of the house.Each area has a wet and dry return. All rads are trapped.All the supply mains have crossovers into the dry returns and are trapped. Some of the rads have Hoffman 2a vacuum vents on them. The only main vents are one Gordon #2 on the dry return before it drops down and connects to the wet returns at the boiler and one on a crossover tee between a very long wet return and the dry returns near the boiler.There is a "Thermoflex Alternator" on the system as well. We removed 15 rads from the 1st floor and installed radiant heat on a separate boiler. There are still 18 rads on 2nd and 3rd floors running on steam.The pressure-troll is set for .6 psi cut in with a differential of 1.I just installed a new pig tail and 15 psi gauge. The boiler ran several times today for 40 mins at a time. The needle on the gauge never left zero. I suspect the boiler would have run longer if the thermostat wasn't satisfied.All the traps seem to work.Most of the rads got fully hot after 2 cycles. The boiler makes steam from a cold start in about 10 mins but the steam is taking way to long to be delivered. The owner has used 800 gallons of oil in about a month! I'm not sure if the alternator is working. Does any one out there have the know how to help get this system right?

nicholas bonham-carter

thermoflex alternator

when i did a search for that here, i came up with this:

http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/1323/58.pdf

haven't really read it thoroughly, but maybe you can.

these vapor systems can be very sensitive to pressure, so are you sure the 0-15 psi gauge works? we also have a very low opinion of the standard vaporstat. if you had a 0-15 ounce gauge, and a vaporstat,, you might see that at say 8 ounces pressure the traps somehow locked shut on overpressure.

do you have any pictures of the boiler piping? how is the waterline during steaming?

any chance of a leak above the waterline? if you had access to an infrared camera, you could see the progress of the steam from cold

if you can see whether the air removal is being restricted, you may find the solution..--nbc

joe amadio

Too Much Oil

Thanks for the responce. There is no vaporstat. There is no leak above the water line, i'm not losing any water. The water level in the site glass flucuates about an inch to an inch and a half when making steam.The sarco aerator you found is piped exactly how mine is. Don't have any piping pics at this time. I can tell you that there are 2 -3'' risers out of the boiler that turn down into a 4'' drop header.Two 2'' mains come off that along with the equalizer.