new to steam heat some questions

Christian Garibaldi

Hello all, Im sure my post will invoke more questions from other here asking for more details but I will give it a shot. I recently just bought my first home which happens to be a former firehouse. Its about 5300 sq feet, 2 stories, all brick and has 12 ft ceilings on all floors and was built in the late 1800s. It was shut down by the city about 3 years ago and went on the market.

That being said, it is now my home. The reason I am here is to try and get a better sense of the most cost effective way to run the heating system currently in here. There is a weil mc clain egh -95 steam boiler that was installed in 2005 in the basement. There are about 18 radiators throughout the building with some massive ones being down in the truck bays that are almost 5 ft long. Theres pipe and faucets and valves all over the place.

It works well and can get the entire place hot in about an hour. The fiemen that used to operate out of here told me that they were opening the windows half the time. I also asked them what it cost to run it monthly gas bill wise and they said hell if they know, they just turned it up and let it fly, the city paid for it.

So Im trying to avoid having a $2000 a month heating bill here and make sure I am running this beast the best I can. I have kept it pretty cold, its about 50 inside and Im bundled up like an eskimo.

I am noticing that the first floor garage is staying warmer than the upper floor where the living space is. I have shut off half of the radiators in the garage, att least the ones I can that dont have busted valves. What I am noticing is that the space does not heat evenly upstairs. some radiators get hot others dont. I can unscrew the air vents at the side of some of them and Ill hear a rush of air and then steam will eventually come out. There are a few that get blazing hot, others stay warm, others just cold. they all have different vents on them, some are loose, some are bent and stripped etc. I am sure that replacing the vents with new and proper sized ones will help somewhat.

What I am noticing mostly though is that the boiler is doing what I would call short cycling. Ill wake up at lets say 5 am to hear a soft hissing from some radiators and then maybe after 20 minutes it kicks off. The boiler isnt running long wnough to get the whole system hot and in my opinion is just wasting gas. My bill last month was $200 just to keep the place at 50. I figure that if I wanted to actually keep the place warm I would easily spend $600-$1200 in gas....Id like to avoid that if possible.

Based off loose calculations, when its running its using about $5 /hr in gas or about 4 therms. Id like to maximinze the energy of the system when it is running instead of just heating up the giant 6 inch iron main pipe from the basement and the couple of radiators near it and then having it kick off. the thermostat is located on the 2nd floor at the front half of the building and is in a room where there are 4 radiators that arent quick to heat up. the back half on the 2nd floor is ice cold and as is the bathroom. Ive actually resorted to opening up the old firepole holes to try and let a bit of heat crawl up into the living space (Yes I have manhole sized 14 ft drops to hard concrete now lol)

The pressuretrol (Honeywell) is set to .5 psi on the boiler. There are some air valves that are in the basement that are on runs to some of the ground level rads that were spewing steam out the other day, i tapped them and they shut. There are also 2 other long vertical lines that run up to the 2nd floor that have what looks to read Kelly no 3 vents on the top of the pipes before they branch out to the rear 2nd floor rads. I removed them the other day while running and after a minute steam started gushing out of the open ports. I cannot blow through them though.

Im just wondering if some of these valves are shot and not letting the steam travel and making it work against a giant air pocket and basically wasting gas.

Im a first time home owner and not that familiar with steam, and of course I have a giant space and this monster heating system so i figured that this may be a good place to try and get some insight as to what I can do to make this work more efficiently and not kill my budget.

Thank you in advance!

Al Corelli_2

Firehouse

What city are you in?

Due to the variables in the system, there is no accurate way to assess your needs. I have done many firehouses, and no two are the same.

Perhaps a visit from a Professional is in order.

Steamhead

Agreed

as far as I know those Kelly vents haven't been made since the 1930s, and were probably sized for coal firing, so just replacing them with the same size probably won't work well. Tell us where you are, there is likely someone near you who knows steam. If you're in the Baltimore area, that would be us.

BobC

Start with the venting

If you cannot blow air through an air vent held vertically it is probably clogged up. They are supposed to stay open till steam hits them and then close, many have floats that will close them if water gets into them and that's why they have to be vertical. All the piping in the basement should be insulated with a minimum of 1" fiberglass pipe insulation to force all the heat up into the living space. If you want to stop a radiator from heating you can turn it's air vent upside down, that will prevent steam from entering the radiator - just make sure that area cannot get below freezing.



What kind of air vents are on the radiators? Radiators might need different venting rates depending on the size and location of the radiator. It is usually best to start with low vent rates on the radiators and large main vents in the basement. You might want to make a list of all the radiators (number of columns, rows and LxWxD size) and the make and model air vents on them.



How many main steam lines are there and what kind of vent is on them. List all the mains by length and pipe diameter so we can determine what vents should be there.



Is the water in the sight glass clean and does it bounce around much when the boiler is producing steam? You also should consider buying The Lost Art of Steam Heat that is sold on this site so you understand how the system should work. That book has a tremendous amount of iformation and you can go through it in a few nights - it will pay for itself many times over.



Bob

Christian Garibaldi

steam

Im actually in bayonne NJ, just outside of NYC. I figured that its tough to assess via the internet. the kelly valves do look old, they are brass and have a pretty vintage look to them, they had about a 1/8 of an inch of old paint all over them.

Mark N

Reasonable Amount

What do you think is a reasonable amount to spend to heat the firehouse? That boiler is huge 400,000btuh input, 1000sqft EDR. Figure out how much radiation you have to make sure the boiler isn't oversized. I would look into the venting of the mains and the rads. Make sure the pipes are insulated. You could put TRV's on the rads in parts of the building you aren't using to maintain say 50 and bump up the temp in the parts of the building you are using. I think also you need to be realistic as to what it is going to cost to heat this building.

Christian Garibaldi

re:

Hi Bob, thank you for the reply, Im sure you are correct. I will need some time to gather all of that info. everything is different through the system, sizes of rads, valves etc. The water in the sight glass when it hasnt been run for a while is a neon greenish color, almost liek antifreeze. When its running, it turns murky brownish. I have drained some from the tank at the beginning of the season and a lot of junk came out. The level will go up and down a bit when its running. Should it or is that bad? I dont know how I would correctly identify the "mains" out of the boiler the 2 outlets combine to one big 6 inch iron stack that comes up through the concrete into the garage, gets to the ceiling and then branches out to feed the raditors mostly on the 2nd floor. on the other side of the garage, there are 2 lines that also come up from the basement that are about 1.5 in each, extnend up to the ceiling and branch out to feed as well. At the top of those 2 smaller ones are those old kellys. back down in the basement on those same lines are 3 or 4 gortons on legs in each corner of the basement lines that feed the rads above on the ground floor. The only other vents I can see are teh ones on each radiator. Those I know are mix of gorton and who knows what else... probably tony baloneys air valves, some stuff from home depot, and a few prob made in a wok in china. Maybe Ill gather some pics of the components and put a link up to a site that I can put them on, unless I can post them all up on here.



As for reasonable cost to heat. aww **** , i dunno, the apt I moved out of before I came in here was running me about $35 -60 a month in gas, it was a 1 bdrm about 650 sq ft. Id like to keep it around that if I could lol..... I m kidding, I know this place wont be cheap, It is 130 years old, 12 ft ceilings, no insulation. basically I think its the poster boy for energy star. Its a LEED certified bldg hahhahaha. Im actually considering looking inot getting a couple of wood burners for the place just so I dont get raped on the energy costs. I am typing this btw sitting at my desk with the therm set at 48, in a hat scarf, down jacket, thermals and a elec space heater blowing on my balls hahahah.



I can handle a couple hundred a month or so, its not so much the money as much as whether or not that energy is being used to actually do something efficiently rather than jsut get thrown out

Mark N

Re:

A couple of hundred a week is more likely to keep the place at a reasonable temp. A reasonable temp being above 65. My boiler is 1/4 the size of yours and in a cold month I can go through $200 dollars worth of gas. Are wood burning stoves even legal in Bayonne? Unless you have access to some free wood, burning wood won't be cheap in New Jersey either. Also heating with wood is very labor intensive. Cutting, splitting, and stacking.

Christian Garibaldi

reasonable

You are probably right, at figuring $200 a week. keeping this entire place at 65 would be a dream for me. I am making sacrifice by keeping this place more than 10 degree colder. Fleece is cheap, and toughing it out puts hair on your chest haha. I wonder if PSEG is going to come knocking on the door at some point and ask whats going on, becaseu the previous bills for this place were prob over a grand a month and now they are a fraction of that. I will make sure to invite them in and see for them selves how cold it is. I actually got out of the shower this morning and I could see my breath in there. I just want to make sure the pipes dont freeze for now, so I bundle up, theres worse things. Like I said, i can have the place at 70 or higher prob in an hour if need be. Its just the setting on the therm currently seems to have this system come on for a time not long enough to really do anything and then kick off.

I wouldnt see why wood stoves wouldnt be legal here, there are people who have fireplaces and stoves. Theres actually a dead chimney on this building that prob was used for an old coal stove way back when.

I know wood is work. I worked in a machine shop for 3 years and we heated the entire 10k sq ft with 3 wood burners. splitting stacking, cleaning etc. it was a pain and it put arms on you for sure, but man... what a mellow sweet heat, pulled all of the dampness out of the air. Youd walk in and just be like "ahhhh" Im just doing loose calculations thinking if a split seasoned cord of wood locally here seems to go around $200, and I could get a cord to last a month lets say between one or two stoves, then it would be cheaper than gas. Just thinking about being cost effective

BobC

Insulate, insulate, insulate

That is a huge building and I'll bet it has next to no insulation. All that mass has to be gotten up to temperature so don't even think of using a setback, it is going to be expensive to heat it in any case. The first order of business should be to insulate at least a portion of the building so you can make it reasonable for yourself. Then you can use an auxiliary heat source to raise that section above 55.



You will have lots to keep you busy.



Good luck



Bob

crash2009

Pictures

When are you going to show us some pictures of that great old steam system?

Christian Garibaldi

pictures of the system

true Bob, there is no insulation. The exterior walls are about 14 inch thick solid brick, the ceilings are 12 ft high on both floors, with non insulated gap between the tin and the roof rafters that the actual roof sits on. The interior walls are lathe and palster. Fortunately, all fo the windows have been replaced with vinyl therma panes, albeit not the prettiest in terms of the style of the building. I do plan to take the tin down on the second floor, put up fiberglass batts, then sheth the bottom of the rafters with plywood and put the tin back up, which can hopefully keep some of the air in a bit better. The walls I would like to keep plaster, and I dont think theres enough room behind the lathe to make is worthwhile to blow in. I dont want to gut it and insulate and sheetrock, i hate sheetrock. I like that this place is dead quiet, and when you smack a wall it hurts and all you hear is a sharp thud.



The pipes for the system are not insulated at all, none of them, and the branches are all exposed in the garage, which prob explains why the garage gets warmer than the 2nd floor. I have aided in getting some heat upstairs b opening up the 2 firepole holes as I mentioned, but still. Im sure it wont be cheap to insulate all of the pipes, the building in 100 ft long, and figure from the basement up to the 2nd floor floors where the rads are, prob 23 ft, then theres 18 rads, with all the pipes, returns, branches, elbow etc. and I would hate to have it look ugly. Is there a pipe insulation that is better than another in terms of cost, and neatness. Any kind of wet insulation that you can mold in place? whats the stuff you see in factories that looks like sculpted palster surrounding large pipes? (Not asbestos)



Anyway, as requested, I have some pictures of the entire system. I actually put them up on my server on their own site just bc there are so many and it would be easier this way. so if you are interested in seeing what I have, follow this link.



http://www.garibaldiphoto.com/proof/heat/

AaronH

Turn those vents vertical!

I'm not an expert, but here are my thoughts:



1) Turn those radiator vents vertical! They won't work properly (if at all) tilted like they are in many of the photos.



2) Check to make sure they're not painted over. Those radiators and their vents looked well painted. If the vent's air hole is filled with paint, it won't vent.



3) You might want to go to a plumbing supply place and get a VariVent for each radiator. Home Depot doesn't sell them. They'll allow you to adjust the venting rate to balance the system.



The steam will only fill the pipes and radiators if the air can get pushed out - through the vents.



Very cool photos and project!

Abracadabra

3/4

Please tell me that's not 3/4" copper feeding 1" ad 1-1/4" risers!







pics 8 thru 12







OMG!.. After looking at all the pics, I can't tell if you have 1-pipe steam or hot water.  Half the radiators look like they are 1-pipe steam and half look like they are hot water.  Do you have any pumps in the basement?





A lot of those vents need to go.  The Gortons might be fine, but the rest need to get switched out.  Make sure they are all vertical like was mentioned

crash2009

Nice building!

When I suggested pictures, I never dreamed you would post 82.  I feel like I hit a home run.  



As others have suggested the radiator vents need to be right side up, exactly verticle for them to work right.  Some might be plugged with paint, you could take em out and hit them on the wire wheel, and blow them out.  I have had some success soaking them overnight in CLR to clean out the insides.  Make sure to wash them out real good after the CLR treatment.  Do you have a 1/8" tapp, course you do, some of the vent holes appear to be crooked, might just be, the firemen just rammed the vents in crossthreading them.  Order yourself a bagfull of spares, the vent size is stamped on the old vent.  I see you have a lot of Gorton C's, and Gorton 1's.  The usual place is pexsupply.com



In one of the pictures I saw a 4' level.  On the radiators with the shutoff valve on the bottom, the radiator needs to be sloped slightly towards the valve.  This is so the condensate can drain.  All the shutoff valve handles are missing.  How are you supposed to shut them off?  I got mine at the local hardware store, plastic, a couple bucks each.



All horizontal steam pipes must be insulated.  I think this is one of your biggest problems.  Here is a shortcut to my entire insulation file  http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/137178/Insulation  Inside the file you will find several internet insulation suppliers, a couple how to's, some reasons to insulate, and a whole bunch of what it cost's you not to insulate.  Start with the boiler and work your way up.



EDIT  Oh yea that insulation you are looking for is in the insulation file look for CHILDER'S MASTIC.

Dave in QCA

Mixture of 1-pipe and vented 2-pipe

The setup has the boiler in a basement, the steam main rise up to the ceiling of the first floor and circulates around with what appears to be 2 loops, with main vents at the end where the condensate drops back down to the basement.  The radiators on the second floor are typical two pipe, with inlets at the bottom and a vent at the opposite end.  However, the first floor radiators are down feed, because the main is up at the ceiling.  So, the radiators are vented, but they also have to have a condensate drip.  It appears that most of those have been repiped with copper, probably a good thing.  The copper drips drop back to the basement where they connect to a wet return that runs at a level below the water line.



Great system, looks like the vents need some maintenance and replacement.  Looks like you need instulation on your mains in the basement.  Since the mains located at the ceiling are in heated space, you could leave them bare.



Great building!!!  Really great building and thanks for posting the pics!  Am sorry to hear that your windows were replaced, as there are better ways to deal with leaky windows.  The problem with most replacment windows is that every 20 years they have to be replaced!  Vinyl doesn't rot, but it sure decays and warps.

Christian Garibaldi

I know i know.

Yeah, I know, its a mish mosh. It is indeed a 1 pipe steam system. the monsters in the front of the garage have a faucet and bypass on them for what I assume is to allow condensate back in case the rad is closed? Id say 80% of the system is iron pipe, and there are some runs that are copper as well. Dont ask me, i didnt do it, your seeing the place as I got it back in august. When I run the heat, and IF I run it, it works, it will get the place hot in a fairly decent amount of time, eventually all of the radiators will get cooking, but its isnt even. Its a pretty quiet system, i dont hear banging and all hell breaking loose the times it has been on. I had a friend of mine over a month ago and she was saying she was cold. I threw her a snuggie and told her to shut up, but that didnt fly, so on the heat went. after about an hour it was comfortable , but I ran down to the truck bays just to peek at the meter to make sure it hadnt blown itself off the building yet from spinning so fast, and as I got down the stairwell, it was like a sauna in the garage, Id say about 8-10 degrees warmer down there, and I have killed half the rads in there.

The shut off valves, half of them are busted, the others are stripped and rounded off on the stems, I can manage to close a few with vice grips. Some jsut spin and have broken gates, others theres not enough to grab onto. I suppose some new valves are in order, as well as some new vents.

Ive been reading some of the threads and I understand the whole venting and the mains thing, am I wrong in assuming that I dont actually have "main" vents? the big fat 6 inch pipe that comes up above the boiler to feed the garage and 2nd floor partially has no air vents on it, the only way for air to get out of there is on the radiators. the only two air vents that are not on the radiators are those 2 old kellys that are on the top of the high vert run on the other side of the bldg, and also the gortons that are in the basement on the leg that runs around the perimeter that feed up to the rads in the back of the truck bays.

Its kind of an all over system from what it looks like. You have to realize, this was a municipal building, they didnt give a ****, plus it was built in 1883, and orig ran steam and horse apparatus from it. I heard that in the 30s they added on the back half of the place and got rid of the horse stables, but i still have the old wood floors in the back where the concrete slab ends and theres also the old coal chute in the floor with the manhole cover over it. Theres also a large hump in the rat slab in the basement like a pie crust, which at first I feared was a tank, or hoffa, or plutonium, i busted through it, and it turns out its the old coal pit filled with clinkers. who knows why they didnt level it before pouring the slab down there. I should be so lucky that it could have been bags full of buried cash to help me pay for the heat bills right hahahah. Im sure plenty of people have had their fair shake at this system over the past 130 years, hence the fkd state of half the equipment. you shoudl see the size of the meter, its the ones they put on factories. My home inspector opened the panel to it and said holy ****!, you better buckle up when that thing runs.

I will check the level of the rads, i will def need to get new vents, thing Im wondering is do I go off that chart that pex and gorton have, or should I just get all the same vents upstairs? ro is that chart pretty solid as reference?



If you guys want to see the rest of the photos of the actual place, heres a link, these are the shots from when I did my first walkthrough before I bought it, its actually much worse now as Im starting to do work on it and strip paint and stuff, but you can see what the place is like. No thats not my minivan, yes, the orig tin is above the drop tile ceiling in the parts of the 2nd floor, yes they actually painted all of the brass **** brown, and yes i plan on keeping the lockers and restoring them (all 26!) the orig wood floors have either been painted, had linoleum glued to them or utility carpet glued on it, so thats a huge project....amongst the 485 others i need to tackle here , figuring Ill be rejoining society in about 10 years. hahahah

http://www.garibaldiphoto.com/proof/bayonne



I appreciate the advice you guys are lending

Dave in QCA

You do have Main vents

If i am looking at the pictures correctly, those Kelly vents are your main vents.  The pipes aren't feeding up from the basement, but rather returning to the basement.  Your steam main comes up from the basement, goes up to the ceiling of the first floor. From what i can tell, it splits into 2 loops, maybe there is another?  That steam main keeps runing around the building, gently sloping downward until it gets the the point there they both drop as a condensate return back to the basement.  That is where the vents are, and good fast ones are in order.



Your  second floor radiators are fed from below, so the condensate runs back out the same pipe as the steam comes in.  But, your first floor rads are fed from the ceiling, and there is no way to make water run up hill back to that main, so a second pipe is added, changed to copper, and thats really not a problem because they propbably won't see much steam anyway.  The condensate drops back throug the floor to the wet return line in the basement. It also looks like the steam drops that come down to the radiators are also connected to a drip line that runs down to the basement.  This is what I am assuming the Gorton vents are connected to.  It's kinda like a riser vent in a tall building... the pipes have a lot of air and you need to get it out.  In this case, the long pipes go down, and to assure that plenty of steam was coming to the main floor area, it makes sense that the vented drops.



It really looks like a well thought out system.  I assume that the reinforced concrete floor in the garage area was added much later than the 1880s construction date.  I would assum that there was probably a concrete or brick floor on grade, thus the overhead steam main was a necessity.  The return piping was probably buried and perhaps it was replaced when the concrete floor got put in.



Love the building!!!!  You got a real gem!  It will make a great home.  I haven't seen hardly anything I would remove except for paint.  Also, the front of the building is quite handsome.  I am guessing that the cornice probably had more decorative parts to it that projected upward.

Christian Garibaldi

Gorton

I just ordered 2 Gorton No 2s today. I was speaking with Keith at Gorton, what a cool and helpful guy. He recommended that I start by putting those on and taking it from there. Those Kellys are clogged and you cant blow through them, so hopefully those 2 big Gortons will help things out a bit, I jsut hope I can fit them with the clearence to the ceiling tin, it might be tight. You guys think that is the best route? wil just two of those No 2s be good enough or do I need more main venting elsewhere in the system? Those are the only two mains that are up high, there are 4xs gorton 1s around the preimiter line that runs around the basement as well, but thats at boiler level.

Dave in QCA

That's a start!

I am not sure how long your mains are.... but from the appearance they are pretty darned long.  I think I would go for a pair of Gorton 2s on each vent point, but what you have orded is a good start.

Also, remember that those Gorton #1s are indirectly venting the main too.  Those Gortons in the basement are venting the drops from the main to the first floor radiators and in doing so are also helping to vent the main.  

Time to get some working vents on your 2nd floor radiators.  There are quire a few opinions, on what is the best vent to use.  Both Nicholas Bonham-Carter and myself prefer the old standby, Hoffman #40.  You can usually find them on ebay for cheap prices.  Also, pexsupply.com is a great source for vents.  Also, look around, you may be able to find replacement handles for those that are missing on your garage bay radiators.  If you can get the valves loosened up, which you should be able to, a handle would make it more operable.  As I recall, some or most of those rads have gate valves, so they should hold just fine if you are able to close them.



On a completely seperate thought, you are wise to get some insulation up in that attic space as soon as possible.  However, if you pull the ceiling down completely you will probably do more damage to the tin than you imagin that you will.  But if it all goes well, you should NOT sheet your ceiling with plywood.  Building codes may not allow it either.  You want to use 5/8" sheet rock, that will give a little bit of a fire barrier instead of adding to the combustable load.  If the tin needs to be nailed to wood, put up furring strips on below the sheetrock.   On the subject of instulation, are you sure that the space above the ceiling cannot be accessed sufficiently to have cellulose blown in?

ChrisJ

green?

Why is the boiler water green in the sight glass?

Christian Garibaldi

Green in sight glass

I think the water in the sight glass is green because its not really water, its nuclear plutonium infused juice which is required since the system is so large and needs that extra oomph to pump the heat out to the entire place. Someone else told me its green becasue theres some additive that was put in it almost like a water conditioner or something.

ChrisJ

Ah

To quote Doc Brown "I needed something with a little more kick!  plutonium!"

Christian Garibaldi

well....

I guess its a good thing I dont have an electric heating system in here, because not only would I be in a totally different forum asking questions, but to quote Doc again... Id probably need "ONE POINT TWENTY ONE GIGAWATTS!" to keep warm

Christian Garibaldi

tada

the quarter pounder with cheese's have arrived, the one jussssssst squeezed in there against the tin. hopefully these help a bit. if not they sure look cooler than the old clogged ones they are replacing

crash2009

We like em fine

How does your system like em now that it can breathe?  Fire it up yet?

Christian Garibaldi

well....

hahhaha funny you should ask, i dont know yet, i wasnt planning on firing it up just yet, but I just heard from my gf who wants to come over for dinner. I replied "I guess I should activate the heat?" her reply was "How cold is it in there?" I said 52 degrees..... I didnt hear anything back, so I guess Ill be firing it up shortly hahahahah. I take the silence to be woman talk for "Turn on the fkn heat"

crash2009

GF or Boiler

You gotta get lucky more if you want to know how your steam is runnin:)  I can hear it now, somebody will say "How was it?" and we won't know if you are talkin about the GF or the boiler.



I think I would be setting up the flat screen in the boiler room.

Dave in QCA

Back to Where?

Ha ha, actually if my memory serves me right, Doc pronounced it "Jigawatts".

Speaking of keeping warm, you may need to invest in a Flux Capacitor too!

Dave in QCA

Back to Where?

Ha ha, actually if my memory serves me right, Doc pronounced it "Jigawatts".

Speaking of keeping warm, you may need to invest in a Flux Capacitor too!

Christian Garibaldi

hahah

ok, so i ran it last night. I didnt notice anythign drastically different, not that I expected much. I did notice though that the two legs that house the gortons are right next to each other, one is on the front loop of the system, and the other is on the rear loop, both then drop down and tie into the loop that runs around the basement. The one for the rear loop will get hot to the touch, the one for the front, not so much. Still trying to figure out why. Also I was kind of tinkering with the rads last night, and the one that is in my bathroom which is literally right above the main vent for the front loop that didnt really get hot was acting funny. I took out the air vent and sat there for about 10 minutes with the system running, the inlet at the rad was warm, but the rest of it wasnt. if i listened by the hole for the air vent i could hear a slight gurgluning, and felt a light wind coming out, but never any steam. any thoughts?



BTW, I turned the heat on when she came by at 8 pm last night and set it to about 62. I shut it down this am at about 9 am. my meter read 471 when i turned it on last night, and was 502 when i killed it this am. so 31 therms to heat the place and keep it there for 11 hours. it was about 28 degrees outside last night. So yeah, it basically cost me about $38 to keep my warm for a night with this damn thing. FML!

ChrisJ

Wow

I was complaining that it cost me around $14 a day to heat the house when we had a low of 12F and a high of 25F. This is also with NG.

AaronH

Radiator Vents...

Lets hope that $38 was worth it!



I still think you need to do a lot more work replacing your radiator vents. Taking the vent off of the one radiator is a good start, why not try some others and see if they get hot. It make take more time for the air to be removed from the system, and it may happen in stages: one radiator fills with steam, its valve closes, then the next radiator fills with steam, etc.



The fact that you felt "wind" coming from the vent hole shows promise - that's air escaping as steam is being fed.

nicholas bonham-carter

Open radiator vent

10 minutes of open radiator venting should have had steam arriving. The gurgling must be from a low spot in the piping preventing the air from leaving. Have you checked the pitch of the mains with a level all the way from header to main vent? Pipe insulation will help as wellwhenyouare sure every part is pitched properly.--nbc

crash2009

Shop vac

I am not pulling your leg.  Shop-vac the hole next time the boiler is on.  Sometimes this is all it takes to get it going again.  Make sure you stop before the steam hits the vac or you will melt the impeller.