HELP! Hot upstairs, cold downstairs. Need help in North New Jersey

fab4ever77

Hello!
Bought a 1938 house last year with 1 pipe steam radiators. Converted oil to gas and got a new Burnham boiler. Insulated the steam pipes in the basement (almost done with this project, but the pipes are 95% insulated).
Cleaned out all of the valves (Varivalve) with vinegar and they all work fine. Pitched the radiators as well.
Our house is pretty small, but the upstairs gets insanely hot while downstairs is still kind of cold. One of the radiators downstairs also doesn't really get hot. We'd really like to fix this and get it hot downstairs!
Any recommendations or people to contact in the area would be great, we live in Morris county.

vaporvac

Do you know what venting you have on the rads and mains? It could be that you need more on the mains to vent it quickly and less on the top floor. It sound like the 2nd floor is hogging all the steam.

BobC

Varivents are very aggressive and have to be turned way down to work right on most systems, if they are wide open that may be part of your problem. Make sure the 1st floor radiators all have a little pitch back to the supply side and make sure the pipes feeding them in the basement has slope back towards the boiler.
How many steam mains in the basement and what kind of air vent(s) on them? If you give us the length and diameter of the mains we can tell you what kind of vents you should have.

Bob

Dave in QCA

As has been stated in previous posts, I suspect your problem is the Varivalve vents. I would recommend setting ALL OF THEM at the lowest setting. Let the system run for a day and see where you are. If you see improvement, but are still cool downstairs, open the downstairs vents up 1/3 of the way. See where you are.
Keep in mind that a Varivalve vent, even in the lowest setting is still a very fast vent and may be too fast to achieve even distribution. Then, opening the downstairs to 1/3, may produce situations where the downstairs radiators act erratically.
You may be able to get your system evened out by slowing down you radiator vents and of course, making sure that you have good and fast venting on your mains. If you can't get to where you need to be, I would suggest changing to a slower radiator vent, such as the old reliable, Hoffman #40.

dlebnikoff

I'm in bergen county with twenty years experience with steam heating and plumbing systems in NJ and NYC. If in need of further help please email at don@jayellplumbing.com or call me
201-207-4090. Where in Morris County are you?

Don

RobG

dlebnikoff said:

I'm in bergen county with twenty years experience with steam heating and plumbing systems in NJ and NYC. If in need of further help please email at don@jayellplumbing.com or call me
201-207-4090. Where in Morris County are you?

Don

If you want to advertise here please set up an account in the "Find a contractor" section.

ChrisJ

Get rid of the varivalves and replace them with something more reasonable from Gorton.

If you can take some pictures of everything it will also help. Specifically the piping around the boiler.

A varivalve even on it's slowest setting will upset a lot of systems. We can help you decide on what vents if you can supply the following information as accurately as possible.

Size of each radiator, length of piping from main to each radiator, length of the main(s) in basement, and boiler size. It's best if you can post a picture of each radiator with it's size.

It's a pain, but once you do all of it you can buy the vents and everything will likely work well.

fab4ever77

It's a Burham IN4PV boiler. All of them are pitched back, and the piping in the basement seems to be pitched correctly. All of them have Varivalves and its seems like I should fix that first. Taking any and all recommendations, please let me know why you recommend that specific one. Should I put different valves on the radiators upstairs? They all seem to get really hot (bathroom one is only pretty hot, not extremely hot like the others upstairs).
Any other recommendations?

One line: (in order of how far from the boiler)
Livingroom (not really working) 36 x 22 x 4.5
Upstairs 2nd bedroom (hottest) 28 x 22 x 4.5
Upstairs bathroom 22 x 22 x 3.5

Second line: (in order of how far from the boiler)
Livingroom (least warm) 36 x 22 x 4.5
Diningroom 33 x 25 x 4.5
Studio (biggest radiator, never gets hot at the end by the vent) 43 x 21 x 4.5
Upstairs bedroom 30 x 20 x 4.5
Upstairs backroom(hottest) 31 x 25 x 4.5

fab4ever77

Also, our thermostat is an Ecobee 3 wifi. We have little receptors in different parts of the house that tell the boiler to turn on to certain temperature at certain times of the day (ie at night the boiler's temperature goal for the house is only based on the receptacle in our bedroom as that's the only temperature we really care about at night). So while our main one is in the dining room, we also have one in the livingroom, one in the studio (also first floor), and just one upstairs in the bedroom as the temperature upstairs feels pretty even except for the bathroom which is always a little less warm...

vaporvac

Hmmmmm. A picture says a thousand words. Your near boiler piping istn't at all correct. Look at the I&O from Burnham's website and compare to what you have. The equalizer should come after the take-off to the mains and you have no swing-joints and essentially no header. Not to mention that each of the two mains should have its own take-off. Also, copper should really only be used below the water line. However, I'll leave it to the experts to comment on how this would affect heat distribution,
Regarding the venting: what venting do you have on your mains? What are their lengths and diameters? This is where you should start, although it's pretty clear you still need to change out the rad vents. Vent the mains quickly and the rads slowly. Then the steam should reach all the rad simultaneously. Please post pics of the mains' vents. C

KC_Jones

It also appears as if you have 2 mains and both of those should be brought down to the header independently, not joined together into one feed as yours is done. I have attached the page from the manual for your boiler showing what the piping is supposed to look like. Did the installer skim the boiler after installing? If they didn't and given what that piping looks like I would guess you are getting a fair amount of wet steam that could be contributing to the issues, but it sounds like your biggest issue is definitely venting. The thermostat you have does it have a Cylces Per Hour (CPH) or a steam setting? If it does it should be set to 1 CPH for steam so the steam has plenty of time to get through the system. You should get the installer out to correct all those piping errors if you can. Was it written in your contract that they would pipe to manufacturers specifications?

KC_Jones

Forgot to attach file, here is the boiler piping for your boiler.

Fred

Wow, that near boiler piping is so wrong. With no header and the one boiler riser tying into those two mains, steam is always going to take the path of least resistance, which means the main with the most main and/or radiator vents on it will always get the most steam/heat. I am sure you need to evaluate both the main and radiator vents but I suspect you won't ever get an even distrbution of steam and balance all of the rads until the near boiler piping is corrected. When that is done, that capped riser out of the boiler should also tie into the new header. As has been said, look at the installation manual for specific guidance.

Steamhead

Are there air vents at the ends of the steam mains? How long is each main, and what pipe size?

j a_2

Fix the near boiler piping to specs. Some one installed the variants in an effort to overcome the extreamily poor near boiler piping...at the same time fix the steam returns and return venting.....it's a small system and should be very basic....use a steam guy off the contractor listings here on this site...

j a_2

fab4ever77 said:

It's a Burham IN4PV boiler. All of them are pitched back, and the piping in the basement seems to be pitched correctly. All of them have Varivalves and its seems like I should fix that first. Taking any and all recommendations, please let me know why you recommend that specific one. Should I put different valves on the radiators upstairs? They all seem to get really hot (bathroom one is only pretty hot, not extremely hot like the others upstairs).
Any other recommendations?

One line: (in order of how far from the boiler)
Livingroom (not really working) 36 x 22 x 4.5
Upstairs 2nd bedroom (hottest) 28 x 22 x 4.5
Upstairs bathroom 22 x 22 x 3.5

Second line: (in order of how far from the boiler)
Livingroom (least warm) 36 x 22 x 4.5
Diningroom 33 x 25 x 4.5
Studio (biggest radiator, never gets hot at the end by the vent) 43 x 21 x 4.5
Upstairs bedroom 30 x 20 x 4.5
Upstairs backroom(hottest) 31 x 25 x 4.5</blockquote
Not a big deal but that's not a in4pv, over is power vent, yours is natural draft...Careful using someone off this site but does not advertise here...my reason, is if he fails, we get a bad rap because you feel you found him on this site and he must be good...It takes a lot of years and proven jobs to be considered, even good at this...On the other hand if u go with him and he has potential encourage him to sign on....