Steam Set-up Right or Wrong?

gamecockNYC

I have a situation and was referred to this site because you guys are AWESOME.

Take a gander at the attached photo:




I have water coming out of the Gorton No. D valve and was wondering if the setup or whatever was done correctly.
Of course the landlord is blaming the plumber and the plumber is blaming the landlord.

Please help, any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Michael

Paul48

It appears to be pitched incorrectly. It should be pitched slightly back at the valve.

gamecockNYC

I noticed that as well. So, the pitch currently goes down towards the left when it should pitch down towards the right?

gamecockNYC

Also, what is the copper tube that comes out of the left side and runs under the radiator for?

Paul48

That would appear to be somebodies piss-poor way of letting the condensate out. Yes, the boiler should be pitched to the right, to allow the condensate to run back down the pipe. If the plumber didn't know that, it's time for a steam pro.

gamecockNYC

Thanks so much for your feedback...I was thinking the same thing...crappy plumber...

Paul48

The tile grout on the left end of that radiator looks wet...just an FYI

nicholas bonham-carter

There is probably a bit of over pressure, and inadequate main venting in this situation, and it has been going on long enough to have caused the installation of the copper tubing.--NBC

Paul48

Tell your landlord, he/she is actually doing themselves a dis-service by not bringing in a steam pro. I can guarantee that they are wasting money on an improperly set up steam system.

gamecockNYC

ill pass that along to the landlord...

Paul48

Send them here, so they don't think your blowing smoke, you know where Or they could just stand next to the boiler and burn $5 bills, one after another.

Steamhead

That return line is even too small for one of Gerry's mini-tube setups. Repipe it properly.

Paul48

The "plumber" has 100 of those lines going into a manifold. He steam cleans engines on the side of the building, after hours. lol

Mark N

They have a Gorton D vent on that baseboard. Should be more like a #4. Not much air in the baseboard. On a 1 pipe system you can pipe a baseboard like in 2 pipe, but you have to pay attention to the details that are explained in "TLAOSH"

gamecockNYC

Can anyone suggest a Steam Pro in the NYC area?

pecmsg

gamecockNYC said:

Can anyone suggest a Steam Pro in the NYC area?

nicholas bonham-carter

Try JohnNY in this thread:
http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/156661/a-new-yorker-in-the-new-yorker#latest

JohnNY

Thank you, Nicholas B-C

nicholas bonham-carter

John, I am sure you are used to dealing with this type of landlord, and situation, of which there are many, not only in NYC, but also many other big towns.
What use is it for the landlord to blame the plumber as an excuse? Who chose the plumber anyway?
Hopefully the sweetness of fuel bills being reduced by 30-50% will make the owners feel better.--NBC

JohnNY

NBC, the work I get to see in NYC and the surrounding area is often astonishingly amateur. I blame it on two things: 1. lack of available mechanical talent (we've got to do something about getting young people into the trades); and 2. an inherent unwillingness to pay for the talent that does exist.

This industry has always enjoyed job security as our positions are not outsourced in the traditional way, like customer service agents are. But we're importing marginally skilled, minimally trained labor to work on mechanical systems and no one seems to recognize the difference anymore between a good job and a bad job. I fear the whole process of mechanical installations and maintenance is being dumbed down.
Frequently we get to see some great work being done by some members of this forum and it revives hope, but by and large, especially as a consultant now, the calls coming to my business are about fixing the last "tech's" disaster.
Bah humbug, man.

BobC

We once had a system of education that worked pretty well, in my area you had shop for three years that rotated through woodworking, metalworking, printing, and mechanical drawing (I HATED mechanical drawing but it taught me some basics that i used for all of my working life). That all ended in the 80's.

Now we just teach kids to pass a test so they can get into college, as a result we have a crop of young people who can't solve problems and have nothing to fall back on if the field they are working in takes a nosedive. Many people are not suited for college but the current "education" system ignores that.

i went to a 4 year technical high school and made a living with that education that took me from the bench, to the design board and finally to a managers desk. The academic side of that education was full college prep so if you wanted to it, you had no problem getting accepted at top schools (Northeastern, Lowell tech, MIT, etc), the brothers and priests made sure we learned how to apply the learning not just parrot it back on a test. When that industry went away in the late 90's I took some skills out of the bag and went to work for the post office (8 years) repairing mail sorting machines. So I got reasonable pay and good benefits because i had a skill to fall back on. That job enabled me to put enough extra aside so i could retire at 62 when arthritis made it more and more difficult to crawl over and into the machines (many over 100 ft long).

Bob

Paul48

@BobC

Private school? The education that can be had in a private school ,is, hands-down, ten times that of a public school. Nowadays, they cost a lot of money, and the kids that can go to them are from privileged families. They will never swing a hammer, or turn a wrench. Meanwhile, they continue to dumb-down the public schools curriculum, so that we teach geniuses and the mentally challenged exactly the same.......no student left behind.

BobC

@Paul48

Yes, Don Bosco in Boston four years of electronics; that was better than a 4 year degree today - I graduated in '66. I remember the last years tuition was $475. All the school systems around here had shop classes in Jr High, the larger cities had public vo-tech high schools.

Paul48

In "66", $475 was a lot of money. A new vette was under $5000.

Jamie Hall

Has anyone else noticed that this thread and @Stephen Minnich 's thread on "Can't Fix Stupid" are really talking about much the same thing? I'd add to the comments on both threads -- not only are our public schools not teaching much of anything useful (like, say, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history) they aren't even allowing any ethics or morals in the school building or grounds.

Used to be...

I really worry about my granddaughters, because I don't have the money or even close to it to send them to private school or parochial school, and neither does my son. What does one do?

Dave in QCA

I think this thread was about a piece of cast iron baseboard and some goofy piping? My 2 cents... Often times baseboard does not drain well through a 3/4" valve on one-pipe steam and so a drip leg is added at the opposite end. In this case, the slope should be slightly toward the drip leg end. The drip leg should be piped in 1/2 black iron or an equivalent. The connection of the drip let should connect to a wet return or otherwise through a water seal to prevent steam from entering the baseboard through the drip. If the baseboard is draining properly, the vent will not spit out water, assuming that there are not problems with a foaming boiler, etc.

As for schools..... I think that most do the best with what they have. Some kids come to school less prepared than ever before and others come to school better prepared than ever before. Teachers are required to do more and more basic things.... and then the endless testing that has come about to score schools, leaves much less time to actually teach. Back when I was in elementary school, we had milk in the morning and the afternoon, it was subsidized for all and was as close to free as it could be. We also had good nutritious lunches that were VERY cheap for all. Those programs were tossed aside in the 80s. Kids don't learn as well, or behave as well, when they're hungry. My parents both went to school in one room country schools. Sometimes they were good, but others, the kids were monsters and ran out the teachers in short order. Classroom sizes of 30 kids are not good, but it takes money to fix it. School boards and administrators continue to do idiotic things. In Rock Island, we demolished a 1920s school building that was in good condition and stunningly beautiful after constructing a new and unneeded building a few blocks away. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

BobC

@Dave in QCA

You are right about the kids not behaving or being prepared for learning. If word got back to my house about something like that it was made VERY CLEAR what the expectations were. No if ands or buts - you were guilty until proved innocent!

Bob

Dave in QCA

Yep, same here! If I got in trouble at school, I was in double trouble at home.

Paul48

The free breakfast and lunch program is still very much alive here. You have to qualify for it, income-wise. A friend told us she watched the kids eat anything sweet they were given, and throw the rest in the garbage, untouched. She just retired, early, because she couldn't take it anymore. If a child in her class misbehaved, she would keep them in for "recess". A child's mother called and complained to the principal, that her son didn't do nothin wrong,,, why was he bein punished? She was reprimanded for doing that. The final straw was having to deliver children to their parents cars after school, open the door and buckle the child in, while the parents sat there.

New England SteamWorks

Dave in QCA is correct. The pitch on the radiator is correct when using a dripped return. The radiator appears to be about 5' long, so it's pitch should be 1/2" minimum over it's length down to the dripped return. The dripped return is, as previous noted, undersized. It is also not pitched to allow the condensate to return, another problem. We'd also need a picture of what happens to that dripped return once it gets through the floor, though I shudder to think what might await us there.