Renter, help with hissing, leaking, loud radiator.

chestercat19

Hello,

I apologize for my questions, I am having trouble finding information on steam heating that gives short term fixes. I began renting a top floor (3rd floor) apartment in a 6 unit 60-70 year-old building this year with steam heat. The landlord sent a plumber out a few days ago to "diagnose" but I have not heard anything from the landlord about any actual work that may be done, I'm assuming because this may not be an easy fix and he does not want to spend the money. I will make sure he does eventually fix the problem, but I'm looking for something I can do to alleviate the issue in the meantime. There are 4 radiators in the apartment, one is silent except for some quiet bubbling noises, 2 hiss loudly, and the fourth leaks, hisses, and clanks loudly.

The boiler turns on once every few hours or so long enough to heat up the radiators and then shuts off. Radiator 4 will begin hissing immediately once the system has turned on. As the system heats up (but the radiator is still very cold) there is a loud clanking at the base of the radiator. This sounds as if someone is hitting the radiator with a metal bat, the floor will vibrate enough at times to be felt on the other side of the room. I have checked and the radiator is pitched slightly towards the pipe, which I believe is correct. As the radiator actually starts to heat, the clanking quiets a bit but the steam from the valve increases. This is wet steam (correct term?), holding my hand about a foot over the vent gets wet. Eventually you can hear it shift from vigorous steam release to a steam release and bubbling. At this point the steam valve will start throwing some water droplets and water will leak from the valve at the base of the radiator (this leaks regardless of open or closed), so water is coming through at two different spots. Most of the water leaking from the base evaporates off as steam before it gets to the floor, but the floor boards are slightly rotted in the area so it is clear this is not new. This will continue for about 20 minutes until the system turns off. The plumber told me to leave the radiator open, so I haven't tried closing the radiator to see if this quiets it, would this be wise?

As I've said the landlord has sent a plumber to look at it, but has done nothing yet. In the meantime is there anything I can do on my end to at least quiet the loud clanking? It has been very disruptive to sleep.

Thank you.

BobC

What kind of vents are on the radiators, are the adjustable?

The banging is called water hammer and it happens when steam comes across pooled water in a pipe or radiator. You might try to see if you can use a lever to carefully raise the whole radiator a bit. That could fix a slope problem under the floor. I've used 1/4 or 1/2" plywood strips for this and it works well.

Bob

Jamie Hall

Do try Bob's idea of raising the radiator which is banging. That can sometimes help a lot.

On the water at the valve at the base of the radiator. Just where on the valve or the connection to the radiator is the drip? Can you tell? It may be possible to correct that, too, without too much trouble.

The valves to the radiators should always be left fully open -- sometimes it works to close them, but most often (particularly on older systems) rather evil things happen when one does.

The other symptoms are all symptoms of one thing: the steam pressure is too high. Not much you can do about that -- but there'd be no harm in directing your landlord to this site; we might be able to save him some money...

Abracadabra

#1 - If you are in a multi-unit building, the hammering you hear may be other units' radiators not pitched correctly or other piping you don't see that's creating hammering. Are the radiator valves fully open? Other than ensuring all the radiators are pitched correctly and ensuring that all valves are fully open, I'm not sure there's much more you can do as a tenant to alleviate the hammering issue.

#2 - Depending on where the steam is leaking from on the valve, the valve may either need to have packing replaced/added or the spud needs to be tightened.

chestercat19

Thanks for the help. I am going to try and put the radiator on a slight incline tomorrow to see if that helps. The valve near the base is leaking at the bottom of the knob where the thread begins. It looks like it's possible it's just not a tight connection there, but is only leaking when the pressure is at its highest. The air valve is a Maid-o-Mist Self Adjustable Air Valve.

nicholas bonham-carter

Have you asked the other tenants whether they have similar problems? Maybe the landlord will be more receptive if several people complain.
One thing is certain, this high pressure is burning about 30% more fuel to heat the building-how would he feel about that?--NBC