Going commando!

Charlie from wmass

You could also use soft copper tubing to connect the gauge as some vibration may simple be from the long iron pipe. Flared fittings and a couple feet of tubing in a nice vertical spiral and mount the gauge to something solid.

ChrisJ

I think I'm going to order an adjustable 1/2" snubber from Dwyer.

They do have an 1/8" fixed one as well, but the 1/2" could protect everything on the line.

Charlie, I am considering remote mounting the gauge as well.

KC_Jones

ChrisJ said:

@Charlie from wmass , I am considering remote mounting the gauge as well.

In his living room!

ChrisJ

KC_Jones said:

ChrisJ said:

@Charlie from wmass , I am considering remote mounting the gauge as well.

In his living room!

Yup!
Already have the wife's approval, I just need to make up my mind.

Charlie from wmass

I have seen that once. I looked a a job near Hartford CT and the priest had a gauge mounted in the living room of the rectory on a riser to the second floor so they could keep an eye on the steam pressure.

ChrisJ

Charlie from wmass said:

I have seen that once. I looked a a job near Hartford CT and the priest had a gauge mounted in the living room of the rectory on a riser to the second floor so they could keep an eye on the steam pressure.

Well,

That stinks. I was hoping to be the first.

KC_Jones

I friend of mine went to someone's house recently and they had an original steam gauge installed on a riser in the living room. It was a useless 0-30 gauge, but it was there. As an added bonus it was actually originally made by a company in the town we live that has long since gone out of business. Sorry Chris you aren't the first...lol

ChrisJ

KC_Jones said:

I friend of mine went to someone's house recently and they had an original steam gauge installed on a riser in the living room. It was a useless 0-30 gauge, but it was there. As an added bonus it was actually originally made by a company in the town we live that has long since gone out of business. Sorry Chris you aren't the first...lol

Isn't that always the way?
Kinda hard when there's already been billions and billions of people around.

KC_Jones

If that were true we would never have anything new. I will go out on a limb and suggest you are the first to ever put a Magnehelic on a steam boiler!

ChrisJ

KC_Jones said:

If that were true we would never have anything new. I will go out on a limb and suggest you are the first to ever put a Magnehelic on a steam boiler!

Perhaps,
But I think @MarkS already had a Magnesense which is the digital version. I believe it uses a hall effect sensor.

ChrisJ

MarkS said:

And now I have a 2nd Magnesense on a main. This week I've been controlling firing rate of off mains pressure. Would you believe 0.28" WC?

Chris, isn't your ultimate objective to have your living room look like the control room in "The China Syndrome" (without the nuclear meltdown, of course)?

@SWEI, when ChrisJ throttles the valve, isn't he in effect creating the "wide spot in the line" on the gauge side?

Yeah, that would work.

This would be cool too.

vaporvac

Let's not forget @Dave in QCA. He also has an original gauge in the dining room of the Best mansion. I covet that, but I would be happy with a remote wi-fi reading!

KC_Jones

I am pretty sure my grandfather has one of those round gauges from that old picture. Can't remember what it measures though....haven't seen it in years! I have this one that actually has a frame and a thick glass top (not shown) and he used to have as a coffee table....still working on wife to bring it out of the attic. And yes that is my hand in the one picture for scale...it's big!

Fred

You could use your skim port and have a custom made pigtail to mount that bad boy! Beautiful!
Maybe even go commando and pipe it over to a corner of the living room. Better than a Grandfather clock.

KC_Jones

Except at 150 PSI it would just sit there and do nothing. hmmm wonder what it would take to retrofit a low pressure mechanism in it? Never mind I don't think I could bring myself to hack it up.

Charlie from wmass

you could use a multiply to use it. one close cylinder of a given diameter pressing a ram into a smaller cylinder to make the pressure multiply to move the scale.

KC_Jones

That would have to be one heck of a multiply! And now my mind is working on how to do that.

Charlie from wmass

two air pistons of different displacements.

Charlie from wmass

a 4" to a 1" bore would be 16 to 1

SWEI

MarkS said:

when ChrisJ throttles the valve, isn't he in effect creating the "wide spot in the line" on the gauge side?

I suppose you could look at it that way, but now we've added a venturi to the system - perhaps making it even more like an organ pipe. I'm sure the snubber will work, but it would still be interesting to see if a really simple, low tech solution would damp the response appropriately.

vaporvac

How does this compare to it "fully dressed"?

ChrisJ

MarkS said:

The EcoSteam development system goes commando!

Replaced the pigtail on the low pressure instrument stack with an elbow and raised it about a foot above the boiler. Had to change the tuning of the pressure control PID loop because the MagneSense digital pressure transmitter is much more responsive than it was on the pigtail. The bottom nipple barely sees any heat from the steam. The system does pull a very slight vacuum (< 0.1" WC) for a few minutes after the boiler shuts down.

Can you run your Magnehelic wide open or are you throttling the valve?

ChrisJ

Finally got my hands on a snubber for the setup.

0.015" hole sure looks a lot smaller than I expected. This is a 1/4" NPT snubber.

The other options from Mcmaster are 0.008 and 0.004.