steam pipes on interior walls

radmix

  I have a customer that wants me to put a steam pipe in his kitchen which is exposed  and re pipe to the exterior wall. Most steam piping I have seen are exposed outside of the wall is there a reason for this? Is it because the extreme heat of the pipe will condensate in a cold exterior wall or does piping in the conditioned space provide more heat to the room?

Hap_Hazzard

Exposed Piping

There can be several reasons for this. Sometimes exposed pipes are part of a retrofit or system expansion, or it could have been as a way to simplify the original construction process or to allow access for maintenance. Sometimes pipes that were run inside non-supporting walls are left exposed when those walls are removed.



It's not likely that an exposed pipe is intended to provide heat because they don't have a lot of surface area, and many of them are insulated. Even those that lack insulation probably had it originally, but if it was asbestos, it would have been removed at some point.

MDNLansing

Hidden Pipes

All the steam and return lines in my house are insulated with asbestos and run inside the walls. I don't have any exposed pipes and don't see any reason you can't do it. I discussed this once with an old steam pro in my area and he said it mostly had to do with construction plans and design. He said sometimes the pipe fitters were called in and had were given a mechanical plan layout the entire system. On other jobs, they would simply call a plumber and ask for a steam installation and leave it all up to the plumber. y the sounds of it, some people used a complete set of mechanical drawings, others just used building plans and left the mechanicals up to the contractor.



Either way, you can run them inside the walls. If you;re going to insulate the pipes I would test it out prior to covering the walls. Just in case the insulation changes the dynamics and causes issues. You would want to be able to remove it without tearing out the wall again.

Dave in QCA

original or retrofit

I find that most buildings that have exposed steam risers had the central heat added some time after the building was built. In most cases, especially in masonry construction, the pipes were just extended up through the living spaces below.



However, in buildings that were build with the heating system installed during construction, in most cases, but not always, the risers are insulated and installed inside the walls.

jumper

architectural issue

It's up to architect to provide chases for services. When I serviced multi-residential I could easily tell when architect was in sync with heating and when designer and installer had to work around.



When there's a redo it is cheaper to just drop pipes in interior.