Separate mains?

Peteys

Going to repipe my header soon and was wondering whether it is necessary to have two separate mains coming from the new drop header or just go into mains with one as it is now. One main goes to the front of house about 50 feet from boiler before going upstairs. The other main is about 5 feet towards the back of the house before going upstairs.



Wasting a lot of fuel the way the header is piped now. Doesn't help that the boiler is way oversized too. WM 968 with 930 square feet of steam with about 550 square feet of edr attached.



Could use a new boiler but its not leaking. Hope it doesn't start leaking after I redo piping. :)



Thank you

Ron Jr._3

Definitely pipe the system mains

separately into the boiler main . And with a boiler as severely oversized as yours , I'd increase the boiler main size as big as you can . This job required a 2 1/2 " main , we piped it in 3 " ( due to the fact we have a glut of 3 " fittings ! ) .



Good luck with the repipe .

Peteys

Ok

Ok, thank you. Gonna be fun removing those pipes on the main lines. Probably gonna have to cut out those nipples and use a chisel. Doubt they will come out with a big wrench. Oh well.



I'm going to repipe the drop header in 3 inch. Hopefully that will be good enough. 4 inch fittings are really expensive.

Dave in QCA

easier way

It might be easier to take the boiler header apart, extend the risers, and run the header through the two tees where the mains take off, then drop down withege equalizer. I'll draw it and post later this afternoon.

Dave in QCA

Header

Here is the drawing. Of course, the risers should have a swing arm at the top and then connect to the header. I have not shown that, with my limited drawing skills and limited time.

Peteys

Thx

Thanks Dave. I'm think I wanna do a 3 inch drop header as I think the steam would be drier. But we will see how it goes when I start ripping it apart. Could work though except header would be 2 1/2 inches. And do you think the mains need to be separated to go into the two mains or not. One main goes to the front, the other to the back of the house. Not sure why it would make much of a difference but I wouldn't know.



Strange piping I have though. Risers are 2 inch going into tees, then out of tees back to 2 inch for the mains.

fixitguy

Disassembly

If the pipes don't come apart, don't cut the nipples, crack the fittings apart with a lump hammer. That's why we use cast iron fittings.

Peteys

Hammer

How do you do that? I've never done that before. One tee looks cast iron, the other looks black. Will it work for both of them?



Usually I'd cut the nipple about an inch past the fitting, then sawzall the inside of the nipple in a few places being careful not to cut the threads on the fitting, then I'd use a chisel and hammer out the nipple from the fitting.

Hap_Hazzard

If they're malleable

they won't break. It's not easy to tell them apart because malleable fittings are cast, then annealed. If you've been wrenching on them with a pipe wrench, and you can see tool marks, they're malleable.

Dave in QCA

removing old fittings

My favorite method for years has been to heat the fitting up with a torch. Get it REAL hot, it will usually come lose. Of course, cast fitting will crack if hammered hard, and that makes it easy too.



Last year, this old dog learned a new trick from excellent pipe fitter, "Boiler wrestler". With a die grinder or a sawzall, make a cut in the shoulder of the fitting. Cut as close as you can to going all the way through, but without getting into the threads of the pipe. Then, take a cold chisel and drive it into the cut. If the fitting is cast, it will crack and fall off. If it's malleable, it might not break, but it will expand and become loose on the pipe, allowing it to be turn off of the pipe with almost no effort.

Hap_Hazzard

Breaking Pipes

Last year when I repiped my near-boiler piping I got to take apart a bunch of old 2" pipes, and in most cases I was able to re-use both the pipes and the fittings (except for the ones that turned out to be galvanized).



Whenever possible I used the pipes as levers to loosen up elbows and tees. If they didn't want to move I clobbered them with a 4 lb. dead-blow hammer. To keep the connected pipe from unscrewing at the wrong end I used a chain wrench to keep it from turning. This type of wrench can grip tight without crushing the pipe. Then I took the pipes I removed with their attached fittings outside so I could get crazy with them. I attached a pipe vise to a railroad tie that was bolted to two other railroad ties and put the pipes into the vise one by one so I could remove the fittings with my 48" pipe wrench.



It was pretty far from easy to get them all apart, but if I found a way to put my weight into it, like jumping up and down on the wrench handle, I eventually prevailed.



One more thing: Make sure your pipe hangers are sound and securely attached before you put your wrench on a pipe and start doing chin-ups on it. Sometimes adding some temporary hangers or a length of chain can keep things from moving around. Just make sure you fasten your chain securely so it doesn't come loose an smack you in the face.

JStar

Header

According to my calculations, I would use 4 inch. Yes it is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE. I think it's worth it. You'll end up spending $X,XXX.XX on just the header alone, but at that boiler size, the steam will have the best chance for being dry. It is especially important to oversize headers on an oversized boiler.



http://www.heatinghelp.com/forum-thread/146979/Steam-Formulas

Peteys

Header

Would love to do 4 inch till I found out fittings are over 100 dollars a piece. I think 3 inch should be sufficient considering the boiler is 22 years old and will need replacement soon. Most of the newer boilers for a correct size for my system call for a 2 inch header but no more than 3 inch.



Just repiping the header correctly should help a lot also.

Rod

Planning for the Future

It sounds like you're already planning ahead and looking at possible replacement boilers. I would be sure to install unions on the riser pipes coming out of the boiler to the header and also on the equalizer pipe so that the boilers could be changed out fairly easily.

- Rod