Welcome! Here are the website rules, as well as some tips for using this forum.
Need to contact us? Visit https://heatinghelp.com/contact-us/.
Click here to Find a Contractor in your area.

Cheat Sheet to visually identify steam traps?

Options
ratio
ratio Member Posts: 3,627
in Strictly Steam
Like the title says, does anyone have or know of a sheet (or two?) of pictures/silhouettes to help me quickly identify them? I'm going to be surveying my church for EDR & get a count of the traps, but although it's a mish-mash of different mfgrs, they seem to invariably been painted over for years.

On a side note, is there a rule of thumb for calculating EDR for a fin tube style convector?

Thanks!

ratio

Comments

  • Sailah
    Sailah Member Posts: 826
    Options
    Best thing to do is take pictures and get a count. Send them to me and I'll help you work through the list. There are so many variations, adaptations and obsolete manufacturers out there to be able to quick reference them. I can also seems you one of our guides but it won't have pictures
    Peter Owens
    SteamIQ
  • ratio
    ratio Member Posts: 3,627
    Options
    Thanks for the offer, @Sailah. This is a new-ish building, 1950s or so. Was a parochial school, now leased to a charter school whom I very much need to keep happy with us. A WAG is 50 traps - hence the desire to streamline the identification. I intend to add inlet orifices to all the emitters, at that point I don't think I really care about those traps. There are, however, a goodly number of drips that have traps on them that will need to be operating correctly. It looks like the majority are Watts thermostatic, with some Hoffman thrown in.

    I guess there's no way to avoid a through examination. I've spent months looking for an easier solution than crawling around the whole building!

  • JUGHNE
    JUGHNE Member Posts: 11,062
    Options
    Ratio, I have a 1953 print for a steam heated school. It uses fin tube convectors. The tube is 1 1/4" steel pipe, the steel fins are 4-4 1/2" square on that pipe, the fin spacing is 1/4". The print shows a 10' section to deliver 69 EDR....a 15' section delivers 103.5 EDR.
    So these figure out to be 6.9 EDR per foot. The convector cabinet is about 18" tall & 6" deep. Slanted on top for louvers and open on the bottom.

    This system had orifices installed which "saved" the traps from certain death after 45 years of neglect. Don't know if traps worked or not, they all got replaced. New orifices sized for 2 PSI.

    Belt and suspenders.
  • ratio
    ratio Member Posts: 3,627
    Options
    My building is cast wall radiators in the classrooms, cast freestanding radiators in the other rooms of the original bldg, steam fan coils in the first addition, hot water fan coils in the second addition, & the occasional replacement radiator & one (that I know of so far) convector that replaced a radiator. I'm actually heading over today to hopefully complete a survey.

    Unfortunately, the convector I'm looking at is a lot smaller, it has several ~1/2" pipes through the fins - I suspect it to be a hot water convector myself. Somebody's knucklehead is showing. I pulled a vent off of a two-pipe radiator right beside it, then cleaned the trap out to drain the water & let steam in again.

    You sized your orifices for 2 lbs. Did you give any thought to running at a lower pressure? I'm fairly certain that my system was designed for 2 lbs as well, but I'm wondering if I can realize any savings by running at a lower pressure. I haven't yet been able to find a orifice table that will give my numbers for lower pressures - it might be the case that a one pound difference will make a negligible difference to the orifice size, in which case I can just adjust the pressure at the boiler. I dunno.

    Thanks for replying. I like hearing about this sort of stuff!

Categories