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Length of wet return pipe.

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Chapstick
Chapstick Member Posts: 64
in Strictly Steam
my wet return is about 30' long. It just dawned on me that the condensate is considerably cooler when it works itself all the way back to the boiler. Is that a big enough waste of efficiency to be concerned with ? Is it bad enough to warrant repiping the returns ?

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  • Danny Scully
    Danny Scully Member Posts: 1,425
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    How would you accomplish repiping them any shorter? You could always insulate them.
  • Larry_52
    Larry_52 Member Posts: 182
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    If the wet return is in the house exposed all the sensible heat lost is into the house anyways. Net neutral loss.
  • Chapstick
    Chapstick Member Posts: 64
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    Cool. Thanks for the replies. Good point about where the heat loss is occurring. I was thinking about it and I would imagine the equalizer pipe must pre heat the water going in as well as equalizing the pressure. Whatever is happening the heat works awesome now.

    Yeah, the mains at the moment are not insulated so I am getting condensate in the steam mains. No water hammer but I can hear it dripping into the wet returns before the traps open on the radiators. No biggie, I'll just buy a ton of pipe insulation and get to work.

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