Vent-Rite #1 tames the savage radiator

Binnacle

After delaying a bit, I purchased a Vent-Rite #1 for problem-child radiator that has continued to swoosh and gurgle despite a Gorton #4 and a Vaporstat set as low as possible. The Vent-Rite's lowest setting runs 1/3 the CFM of the Gorton, and it's the right answer for the situation. Writing this post to help others who may have a similar issue.

Was a bit surprised to discover the 50-year-old boiler is 50% oversized for the case where all radiators are open and two undersized rads are upgraded to big-boys as is the plan. But the Eskimo tenant on the first floor has 3 of 5 radiators shut, another one is temporarily off to keep some computers happy and the two small radiators are still, well small.

Therefore the boiler capacity is presently a shocking three times what's required for the active radiant square-footage.

Not much can be done in the short-term except installing the Vaporstat and generally downsizing vents to mostly #4s and #5s. But despite the aforesaid effort, the one hardest-hit, steam vacuuming, wailing radiator remained intransigent--that is until the Vent-Rite put it in it's place.

BobC

I ran a v75 that was 3X the installed EDR for 16 years. With proper venting and using low pressure, the system was quiet and pretty efficient. Interesting that half my vents were ventrite #1's.

Bob

Charlie from wmass

And now you can see why I have a case of Vent Rite 1 s on my truck.

Charlie from wmass

Slow radiator vents regulate the heat production to the room. Vent the mains fastest and the radiators only fast enough to heat up the rooms.

Charlie from wmass

I tend to only use Vent Rite 1 ' s in most buildings I work on. I seldom set higher than 6. If the room is comfortable before the radiator is heated all the way across then you will find less over shooting of the temperature setpoint. If the boiler shuts off on high pressure. It is not burning fuel and the steam reservoir i.e. The supply pipes meter out the steam as needed by the radiators. Remember you can compress a gas.

Binnacle

Last year I was wondering if Vent-Rites would be a good choice for their adjustable quality. Now I'm sold on both the smaller low setting and adjustable feature.

Then and now the thought was that the (yet-to-be-completed) insulation of risers and some-day potential departure of the Eskimo would both result in the need to re-balance. Much easier to run around and tweak the knobs on Vent-Rites then to swap whole Gorton's or even Maid-O-Mist orifices. So while the Vent-Rites are expensive, for a house-size deployment it can be worth the cost increment.

With-respect-to the troublesome radiator, my hands are somewhat tied regarding the Vaporstat setting until the risers are insulated. The furthest-out rad gets steam so slowly that it requires a wide-open Heat-Timer Varivalve and a 5oz-in 8oz-out Vaporstat setting. But at this setting the closest-in rad wants to gobble steam and send a flood of condensate back down the pipe. Even one ounce less on the pressure control and the way-out rad stays cold. A system of extremes, with the biggest and smallest possible vents required to balance it (for now.)

(for anyone wondering, yes the main is aggressively vented with a combined Gorton 2 and Hoffman 75)

Binnacle

Can you create a situation where the boiler trips on pressure earlier than desired, if the radiator vents, as a group, are exceptionally small? If you utilize a full set of Ventrite #1's in a building, I might think that such an issue would occur?

If "earlier than desired" happens, then one would adjust the pressure control (preferable a Vaporstat) and/or vent settings to produced the desired system behavior.

The idea presented is that Vent-Rites have a much lower minimum setting than any other vent (Gorton #4s in particular) and this can be tremendously useful in certain situations, particularly I think where an oversize boiler is in the picture. That said, the maximum setting on Vent-Rite may be too slow for some radiators and larger Gorton's would then make the most sense.

As an update to my next above post, I discovered that the system runs better with the way-out radiator's Heat-Timer (super-fast vent) cranked all the way down to 1mm from the minimum setting. This is approximately equivalent to a Gorton 6 or C, so the original theory I had for solving the balancing problem was a bit backward. What was needed was not a super-fast vent for the far-out radiator, but a super-slow vent for the closest-in radiator. It appears the close-in radiator gets whammed with steam and probably exacerbates the problem by forming a vacuum at the point in the cycle where it's condensing maximally. No idea why this is the case as nothing in the way the pipes run would lead one to believe this particular radiator would be pounded--such are the mysteries of steam.

I recommend highly that anyone faced with a challenging system balancing issue purchase Gerry Gill and Steve Pajek's "Balancing Steam Systems Using a Venting Capacity Chart" from the HH site. This document costs about what one vent costs and is worth a great deal more.