Gurgling in 2nd Floor Steam Riser

danFromJersey

I have a riser pipe going to my second floor bathroom from which I can hear gurgling through the wall on the first floor. I also hear gurgling in the radiator itself.



I have a one pipe system. The main is about 33' of 2" which I have vented with 2 gorton #1's. The radiator has 17.5 EDR and a 1" pipe that runs to it (10' horizontal with little pitch and 10' vertical).



For the first two years I lived in the house, this radiator never got hot. I finally replaced the old vent with a variValve and it got hot all the way to the radiator valve. I then replaced the vent with a gorton C. It finally got hot, although it is the last radiator to get hot. Now that it heats, it gurgles the entire time the boiler is on. I put a few pennies under the feet of the radiator to increase the pitch but this hasn't helped.



I recently read Dan's book The Lost Art of Steam Heating. This has given me some theories about the pipe.



1) The valve is bad and not opened all the way not allowing the condensate to properly drain.



2) Because of the low pitch on the horizontal run, the pipe should have been 1 1/4" to allow room for the condensate and steam to flow in opposite directions.



3) The rise needs to be dripped. This option is difficult since I have a finished basement and would have to drip this pipe right in the middle of the basement.



Do I sound like I am on the right track?



The other reason that I am writing this post is that now that I have insulated the steam pipes and fixed a few of the vents based on venting charts, I seemed to introduced a new problem to the system. For the first two years I lived in the house, my lwco would trip maybe once a season and I would have to add water. Now this is happening more frequently. I returned home yesterday to a 48 degree home because the lwco had tripped while i was out. I added water to the system and it ran for several hours to get the house back to 65. During this run, the 0-30 psi gauge moved for the first time and the system registered 1 psi of pressure. At the end of the run, the lwco tripped again as the water had dropped from the middle to the bottom inch of the glass. Last night I filled the system and it has been running like normal through the night and morning. This morning when the system stopped running, I see the water level is about an inch below the middle. Is water getting trapped in this radiator? Has my insulating work somehow forced the detection of a leak somewhere in the system?



Note: I checked the system about 15 minutes later and the condensate seems to have filled the water level back to the middle of the glass.



Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Dan

nicholas bonham-carter

Enough pitch in pipe?

Sometimes you can slowly raise up all feet of the radiator, and put an equal investment in quarters under each leg, plus one more under the air vent end. This may give the horizontal pipe enough slope to drain properly. Do a quarter at a time to give the pipes a few cycles to adjust to their new angles.--NBC

danFromJersey

sound in riser too

Thanks. That makes sense for helping with the radiator. However, would this help with the gurgling sound in the riser pipe between the floors?



How many cycles would I have to wait for the condensate to finally leave the radiator?

RoiiRaz

What changed...?

Did you only change the vents since things were fine? Not clear why you are losing water. Are your new vents hissing like crazy and losing all your steam?

danFromJersey

Recent changes

Recently I made the following changes...



Added two new Gorton #1 main vents

Insulated almost all the pipes running through the basement

Changed 4 vents based on venting chart



Last night after the low water cuttoff situtation and the house getting very cold, I rechecked the level on the radiators. I found three that had the wrong pitch. I added pennies under the legs to get the pitch right. Today, the thermostat has been calling for heat all day and the water level doesn't seem to have dropped.



I still can't figure out why that one radiator gurgles through the riser.

JStar

Gurgling

Gurgling is always caused by water collecting somewhere that it's not supposed to. There may be pipe and fittings in the floor under the radiator that have gone out of pitch. As suggested, try raising the entire radiator, not just one side. You may also need to take the hand valve apart to see if it is in tact.



If those two options fail, there must be water collecting in the supply pipe somewhere.

danFromJersey

Gurgling seems to have gone away

I added coins under both feet raising the whole radiator and more coins under the vent side pitching the radiator. This seems to have done the trick. Maybe the gurgling was caused by a horizontal run in the wall that I couldn't see.



I am still having a problem with losing some water while the boiler is running. I am losing maybe a pint a day. I can't find any wet spots either upstairs or in the basement. I went around a overpitched all the radiators so they are definitely flowing back to boiler. The only thing I can think is that I have a sag in a long run somewhere that it causing water to pool. I don't hear any hammering so my guess would be that it is in the dry return.



Thanks again to all who gave me advice.

j a_2

pressure

What is the pressures set at? Is the pigtail clean? Its not uncommon for a bathroom radiator to do this, because it is the most common room to be remodeled…Often the riser gets cut out and replaced by others and the pitch back is improper…Just my opinion…Site unseen...

danFromJersey

Pressure Setting

The pressuretrol is set to .5 cutin with a differential of 1. I recently cleaned the pigtail. The 0-30 gauge never registers unless the system runs real hard at which point I've seen the pressure build to just under 1.5psi. I have never seen the pressuretrol cutout.



I just added a 0-3 wika gauge and new pigtail for the pressuretrol. I am going to fire it soon so I can see what the pressure builds to. I am interested to know if my pressuretrol even works. I can manually trip the switch and I have checked the orifice to make sure its clean, but up til now I have had no way of knowing the true pressure of the system and the state of the pressuretrol.