adding more main vents

Hollis

Can you have too much main venting? Going to have a new (prob a 300K) boiler for and 8 unit apt house. The old boiler seems to be able to supply and balance out the heat in each unit pretty well, although we use a lot of oil in this building. I see only two main vents, largest Gortons,therefore I'm guessing that most of the steam venting is via the radiator vents which as I understand it,is not the best way to vent...also .one is in a bad place, don't know why they placed them where they did,..probably did so before the basement was converted into an apartment,..but one is .in the basement apt in the shower room. Wondering how hard it would be to tap into current return to put in more venting,..and wouldn't it be best to do so near the when we do the new install?boiler? 

gerry gill

The best answer to that is Dans famous answer 'it depends'-

In general you can't vent the mains to fast..but sure sometimes you can..in a house i would say you cant vent the mains to fast..in a building of size i would say, lets try and see what happens..reason being, in a big building the steam is going to generate a huge amount of condensate, so the faster the steam moves the more condensate created at a specific point in time..some may come flying out of an air vent as they are usually not located in the best places..i generally have had no problems when i max out the venting of the existing tapping..but i can see issues with adding bigger tappings or more of them if the mains are bare and cold when the steam first fires up..but the mains should be well insulated so thats really another issue..so the best asnswer to the question of can you vent a main to fast is 'generally no, but there is always the exception to the rule'.

Hollis

thank you

Thank you Gerry,..well another thing,..is it Ok or best to put in the vents very near the boiler? I suppose then I could put piping in that could accept more vents (?)

gerry gill

hard to say without seeing the piping,

generally they go at the vicinity of the ends of the mains, where ever they may be..if they end back at the boiler thats okay..however every so often we run into high ambient ceiling temps by the boiler which could perhaps close the gorton vents prematurely..rare occurance but something to keep in mind.