Hacked up two pipe vapor system....

JC from PA

A friend of mine asked me to look at his church boiler the other day and then asked if I would give him an opinion on some repair qoutes he had recieved. It's a mid 90's W/M 78 series with 12 sections making hot water for baseboard and fan coils. No big deal, one of the intermediate sections is cracked. The friend tells me the attending contractor put in 'stop leak' and told him that he needed a new boiler as they didn't make the 78 anymore. It's a small town in PA and there aren't many, if any, hydronic/steam guys anymore. Lot's of general contractors claiming HVAC skills. I verified the section availibility first with an out of town boiler contractor and was told that they make the 80 series now, but the intermediate section will work in the 78. Ok, no sweat there, but what about the squick or whatever they put in the system? How polluted is the piping going to be and what is the best way to clean it out? Just flush it out or does it need a cleaning agent? Now the plot really thickens as an adjoining building has another 78 series, 9 section making steam. Apparentley that has not worked right for years. Probably since the W/M was installed. He doesn't know what was in before, all he nows is that that radiators don't get hot and it's cold in this classroom building in the winter. It appears to be a two pipe vapor system as I don't see any traps. It has old style vari vents on the radiators and standard radiator valves, the return elbows don't look like the have anything in them as they look like regular 3/4" 90 bends, but they are old. When they put in the W/M they also put in a boiler feed pump that looks like it has a water seal piped in front of of it to keep water in the return. The pressuretrols are almost bottomed out, so it looks like they set it down as far as the control would go. After re-reading my history of steam heating and reading on the wall, it seems as if I need to make sure the main vents all work, piping is pitched correctley, install a vaporstat and a gage for reading ounces of pressure. What else? What next? Thanks guys!

Charlie from wmass

I feel strongly you will need

to replace the boilers. When that sprang a leak I would bet other sections are also bad, you will find out just before Christmas Mass. Be realistic the boiler has been in for 20 or more years and was not installed as it should be. Would a car last 20 years with a bad driver, cheap fuel, and a stuck emergency brake?

Steamhead

Where in PA?

the Vapor system might be a Kriebel, Richardson, Thermal or some form of Orifice system. It should not have air vents on the radiators- that's a sure sign of knuckleheading.



Find out from Weil-McLain if the 80 series intermediate section really will work in a 78. But even if it will, some other section might be getting ready to fail, so simply replacing a section might be a short-lived (and still expensive) repair.



Also, do a heat-loss calculation on the building using hot-water baseboard- it's very possible that boiler is oversized.

JC from PA

You make a good point about replacing it.

I didn't even talk about the ho-made bypass loop or the other non-factory near-boiler piping. Same contractor installed both boilers. I like the W/M sectionals, I have a number of them where I work as a maintenace repairman foreman at a small state university. They have lasted well, but they have had pretty good attention and where installed relatively well with swing joints and no cold starts to speak of. We curve all our boiler water temps to keep from condensing in the combustion chambers and to eliminate thermal shocking the cast iron. We lose sections on our steam boilers occasionally, but the ones that make hot water have rarely lost sections. The o-rings are another story. We generally do the whole unit when one leaks, then it's done. Thanks for the advice!

JC from PA

We are in sunny(today) Lock Haven, PA....

So you think the knuckleheads put vari vents on? They have round, white knobs with red numbers on the very bottom. I don't recognize them and I'm guessing them to be 30-40 years old? Next time I get over there I'll snap some pics of the radiators and post them. I want to look over the piping again anyway and make a sketch of what is there so I can think about it. This is coal territory so it probably was coal originally, then converted to oil, then natural gas.

I did verify that the 80's will fit the 78's. At least the intermediates will. And I hear what your saying about the other sections being questionable. It's very possible they have been stressed and weakened. The friend who showed this to me would like to put in a pair of smaller condensing boilers anyway. I'll recomend a heat loss to go with the price qoutes on the new boilers as well.  He's looking for good advice, which as you know can be hard to find sometimes. Thank you for posting!

Steamhead

I know where that is

if you need some more eyes on this, get in touch- it's a nice day trip from Baltimore.



Take some pics and post them here- let's see what you have.

nicholas bonham-carter

Old church systems

There are no condensing boilers for steam systems, and conversions of 2-pipe steam are not recommended, without new piping, and maybe new radiators as well.

Is there some easy piping route between the 2 buildings so one boiler could do double duty supplying steam for one building, with a hot-water loop for the other?

Pictures of the present piping will be very helpful, to determine what sort of problem caused the 2 sections to rot out (constant makeup water/thermal shock?).

If there are not many steam/hydronics experts in the are, then the maintenance needed for the condensing boiler will not be regularly, or competently performed. A resectioned, or replacement boiler should have a 30-40 year life span ahead, if it has been properly installed, and maintained--NBC

Hap_Hazzard

Vents

That sounds like a Vent-Rite #1 adjustable vent, except for the color of the numbers on the knob. (See picture.)



Vent-Rite #1s have a 3/32" vent port, which would make them roughly equivalent to a Gorton #6 at the highest setting when they're brand new. I doubt they're as old as you think--radiator vents don't last that long--but if they're more than five years old they probably aren't venting at their full capacity anymore.

JC from PA

Sorry for the confusion, it's 2 different buildings and boiler problems.

I should have made 2 different posts it's just that the one problem led to the next and I wanted to tell the whole story. I was asked to look at the hot water system, then the steam system at the same church.I need to get back there and take some pictures of the vapor system to post. You're right about the service on the condensing boiler, weve had quite a few problems with some of ours. Some have been trouble-free as well?