Need advice on replacing main valves

agurkas

Unfortunately, during forum upgrade my other thread was lost. Some of you gave me really good advice there. I found a cached version and copy pasted it for myself in a doc.

So now there are two questions that remain unanswered for me:
1. I have bought "Greening Steam: How to Bring 19th-Century Heating Systems into the 21st Century" Kindle e-book. Do you think I should also buy Balancing Steam Systems Using a Vent-Capacity Chart, by Gerry Gill and Steve Pajek? Or is the 1st book covering basically everything Greening Steam covers?

2. As shown below, these are the only type of vents on the mains (I think there are 3 or 4 mains). Two of them seem really rusty, which just happen to go to the 2nd floor that take about 10-15 minutes for steam to get to, but when it does, it is like blowtorch. The other two look clean.
Longest main I think is about 50' or 60'. Shortest one does not have a vent. The other two mains likely are about 30'-40' by my estimates. The vents in the picture are the only ones in the system until you get to the rads, which all have Vent-Rite #1s.
Should I replace all four of those main valves to Gorton #1s?

nicholas bonham-carter

Use at least I gorton #2 on each--NBC

BobC

The vents you have now look they have 1/8" threads, are there reducers that you can back out? If you have a 40ft 2" main it has about 0.87cu ft of air in it, you would like to vent all of that air in a minute or two. It is usually best to vent the mains very fast and the radiators slowly

Gorton #2's have a 1/2" male thread and are a large vent, #1's have a 3/4" male thread and a 1/2" female thread and are a lot smaller. One Gorton #2 has the venting capacity of over 3 Gorton #1's

Bob

JStar

I try to use 1 Gorton #2 for every 20ft of 2" main.

agurkas

1st and foremost, read most of Dan's Greening Steam book. Wow. I was not expecting it to be that easy of a read.

Went in search for the main vents. The three I have easy access to are not working. Took them out and tested them like in the videos. Zero air coming out of either.

Two vents are Vent-Rite #35. I think they are 1/2" male. Did outside measurement with a caliper.

The one vent that serves furthest rooms has 1" Vent-Rite, but it is too rusted for me to see which size it is. I attached picture of it.

So the question, since all valves suffered from goop ingestion and there is a bit of a clearance issue (see picture for the 1" valve), should I look at getting possibly 45 degree angle elbow and do like a 12" riser pipe from that to reduce the fate of expensive Gorton #2 becoming clogged with goop fate?



Also, in this return there is a capped pipe. Should there be a air valve?


P.S. Immediately lowered the cut-in pressure from 1.5PSI it was set on to 0.5PSI. Actually most of the banging went away after doing that.

JStar

It's always a good idea to raise and offset main vents. It will protect them from water hammer and loose debris.

Looks like that capped pipe is definitely the spot for a main vent.

agurkas

Now the mains coming out of the header are 2", but seems like half way through the loop they become 1.25"OD. How does that affect venting?

agurkas

Now the mains coming out of the header are 2", but seems like half way through the loop they become 1.25"OD. How does that affect venting?

BobC

As long as there is not too much radiation attached after the reduction in pipe size you should be ok. A 2" main can handle 386 sq ft of steam IF it is a parallel flow system (steam and condensate flow in the same direction) so a 1-1/2" main could still take care of maybe 175 sq ft of steam (just an estimate, my tables don't go below 2" pipe).

Bob