Newbie looking for info on old American Standard boiler

Koan

Looking to move into a 5 bedroom end of group 3000 sq ft townhouse built in the 20's in Baltimore. It has an American Standard steam boiler with a natural gas burner. Trying to find information - but since American Standard hasn't made boilers since 1974 info is scant. Tried looking at Beacon and could not see a match. Series 3BN J2 boiler 40S. Pic attached. System has been inspected and seems to be in good shape. Just replaced LWCO float (was water logged) and Blow down valve. Was amazed at the amount of rust scales that came out of the valve body (McDonnell Miller 67-g) Any info will be appreciated. Read the Book "We Got Steam Heat" and loved it. Wondering how old this beast is and whether or not I should replace it and with what. Thanks in advance. Kelly

KC_Jones

Can't help you with that. I will let you know this in case you don't already know. One of the best steam men in the country works out of Towson and services your area. If you need ANYTHING done with that boiler he is the ONLY one to call. @Steamhead

https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/all-steamed-up-inc

Koan

Ironically, I happen to know that they have inspected this very system! Thanks!

KC_Jones

If he has been there already then hopefully he will comment or contact you. He is like an encyclopedia with steam.

Koan

Thanks again KC. Hoping to improve the existing system as much as possible and get a better feel for the system in place.

Fred

There have been a couple others posts on this site in the past week or two about American Standard Boilers. The only comments made by a few of the Pro's were very positive about the quality and reliability of those boilers. If Steamhead's team inspected this particular system, he may have some ideas for you on improving its effeciency/venting etc. Hopefully he will pick up on this thread.
The MM #67 LWCO should be taken apart and cleaned once a year. Be sure to blow the boiler down once every week or two during the heating season.Also make sure to take the Pressuretrol off and clean out the pigtail (looped pipe) once a year. They clog pretty easily. Very easily if they are mounted on top of the MM #67.

Steamhead

Koan said:

Ironically, I happen to know that they have inspected this very system! Thanks!

Koan, give us a call. If we've worked on that we should have a file on it. I'm in the office at the moment, 410-321-8116.

Koan

Thanks Fred, cleaning out the LWCO is actually what got me started on this. It had the old style twist blow down valve, and even though it wold drain out small pieces of rust, the larger ones had started to accumulate just above the valve. I strongly suggest anyone with the old style valve upgrade to the quarter turn version. If you are cleaning the valve out, it seems to be a good idea to remove the float so as to not risk puncturing it. In my case the float was water logged anyway. Either way I can definitely see why one needs to do this. Eventually the sediment will suspend the float even if low on water.

New England SteamWorks

Can we get a photo of the whole boiler?

Koan

Hi RI SteamWorks - Will do but going to be out of town until Friday - thanks!

Koan

@Steamhead
Just checked the total EDR of all the radiators to be 399 sq ft but the name plate on the boiler says 750 st ft. Unless im wrong that's a pickup factor of 1.88. Is it safe to assume the boiler is oversized?

KC_Jones

It's massively oversized. You compare that 750 number directly to the 399 number. You are essentially 87% oversized with a "pick up" of 150%. On the high end you need a boiler roughly half the size of the one you have. If your EDR calculations are correct.

Koan

@KC_Jones
Thank you sir! I actually removed all my radiators and in doing so found the Pierce Butler guide on the archive here. Put it all in Excel just to check my math. Just double checked - definitely 399 sq feet. Have not calculated pipe area though, but much of it is fiberglass insulated. Now the question is what do I do?

The boiler is old, but works fine, and Steamhead says it probably has 10 years left even though it is from the late 60's or early 70's.

I want to install spark ignition and a motor dampener which means swapping out the gas valve anyway. Does anyone ever just reduce the size /output of the burner alone or is that asking for trouble?

Charlie from wmass

You have a very simple solution. Call @Steamhead . He is simply the best, most people need to hunt down a person familiar with steam.

Steamhead

Thanks, Charlie!

Koan, that boiler is definitely oversized. We had not gotten as far as counting the radiation when I was there last, but if the figures are as you say, it would tilt the balance away from upgrading it and toward replacing it.

The original coal-fired boiler was almost certainly oversized- that was typical since most people wanted a larger firepot so they wouldn't have to shovel coal so often. When the boiler was replaced, they probably sized the new one from the size of the old one- unfortunately, that's also typical, and quite wasteful.

We recently replaced an original Spencer coal-converted boiler for one of your neighbors, and as expected, it was oversized. Go here to see pics, it's the second one mentioned in the thread:

http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/151822/two-recent-steamers

Don't worry about the flood zone part, this was at the bottom of the hill.

Koan

@Steamhead : Frank, I am grateful for your sage input! As you know I am a DIY kind of person, and I dig solving the problems and learning about this stuff. I am learning a lot thanks to your generosity and many others on this forum. You and many others have been amazingly helpful and I find myself compelled to again express my gratitude. While learning and solving problems is important to me, there are things I can do and many I really can't - the trick is to understand which is which. I am relying on you for your help in that regard, and I hope that is OK. Additionally - there are things I can do and simply do not have enough time to do. You know more about this stuff than most will ever know about anything. The more I learn, the more I understand how deep and broad your knowledge is. I figure the best compliment I can give is to recognize your expertise.

Just for grins what is the BTU/Hr rating (and is that input or output) and IBR sq ft of steam of the Baier you installed - ?

http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/151822/two-recent-steamers

I know in some rooms the floor is warm when the boiler fires, I assume there is a steam pipe heating a bathroom floor so that may add a little? I am assuming that 140 to 160 MBH DOE output would do.

I think it is probable a replacement is in our not-too -distant future, maybe 2-5 years, depending on budgeting. I am starting to think putting improvements into this boiler may not be worth it, but not really yet sure. I have to ask - does anyone ever simply replace the burner tubes and gas valve to lower output or is that just stupid?

I know a neighbor that I think still has a Spencer converted to oil (address two numbers away from mine)- What a behemoth!

BTW on the water heater I replaced the whole burner assembly and so far even at 40 gal never running out, though it is cranked up a bit. I figured that was a good stopgap.

Thanks again
Kelly

Steamhead

Slant/Fin Intrepid TR-40H, fitted with a Carlin EZ-Gas burner rather than an oil burner. In this configuration it is rated 550 square feet, but we have it down-fired a bit. Here's the brochure- doesn't mention the gas burner option but the factory does support it:

http://www.slantfin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Intrepid-Catalog-Sheet-316.pdf

Firing a wet-base boiler with a powered gas burner gives us more heat-transfer surface than the usual atmospheric type that you have, and eliminates the heat lost through the base of the boiler. It also gives us better control over the incoming combustion air. Together these increase operating efficiency by up to 6%, based on the manufacturers' ratings and depending on what models we're comparing.

The piping factor is built into the rating, so there is no need to allow anything extra for it.

Please show that thread to your neighbor and have them get in touch. Spencer was one of the best boilers you could get back in the day, but we can do much better now. Also, unless the asbestos has been removed, we'd need to bring in a licensed asbestos contractor to handle that end of it, as we did on the earlier job.

Koan

@Steamhead Geez it is so much smaller than the old American Standard !!... and yes the neighbor's house has asbestos and the Spencer is leaking water, but he thinks it is only from the gauge glass. We will find out more when heating season starts! I will gladly pass this on.

Steamhead

The gauge glass should be an easy fix. Do they have the Hoffman system with the Differential Loop, which ISTR you have, or the Bishop & Babcock system that we also find there?

The Steam Whisperer

Frank, I bet you could get some really good efficiency numbers out of that old A/S if firing it at 1/2 capacity, especially if wet base. All of the atmospheric A/S boilers I run into from the 60's have combustion efficiencies only a couple points off from the best models today.

Steamhead

This is one of the taller ones though, not the shorter ones with the high stack temps.

Koan

Frank - not sure about the neighbors - Ill see if he has the Hoffman loop

Koan

@Steamhead I am now curious as to how the difference comes into play. What if we down-fired this unit for now? You know the system - would it work?

Charlie from wmass

I'll admit I'm just guessing here but I would think that the boiler is already down fired. One of the benefits of installing a new boiler is that you would be heating a lower mass water and a lower mass of cast iron each heating cycle.

Steamhead

It may or may not be down-fired. We'd have to check the input rate. If we down-fired it, we would have done so while monitoring the combustion process with a digital analyzer. Below a certain point you don't get good combustion.

Koan

@Steamhead
Radiators are all out now. Once reconnected I'll fire up the boiler and check the usage at the meter as an estimate. Maybe we can tell from there. Thanks!

Koan

@Steamhead

Do you like the Slant fin intrepid TR-40H better than the Smith 8HE (re-branded Peerless WBV)? I thought I read somewhere you were not to keen on the flue arrangement?

If I can't get the near boiler wet return piping unclogged it may happen sooner than I had hoped for! It really was amazingly clogged up having no flush vales in the system really took its toll.

The Hartford loop vertical section back up into the boiler had about 1/4" open inside a 1-1/4" pipe. I got the (2) 2-1/2' caps off the boiler sides and the caps were completely full of gunk. in fact the blue path in the first picture was all very occluded.

Oddly though the horizontal returns on the floor seem clear.

I will use a 4' piece of PVC through both the caps with holes sawed into it where the 2" tees go back horizontally to the return path to try to keep any more gunk from getting into the boiler.

2.47" is the listed ID of the steel pipe and a 2" PVC pipe is 2.375 OD. Even a 1-1/2 PVC (OD 1.9") pipe could work. Will just use a hole was or jig saw to open up the flow to the exits without allowing full flow back into the boiler.

Once I finish this I figure the efficiency will improve a bit or it will expose a leak in the boiler. We shall see soon!

Steamhead

We haven't had much experience with the rebranded Peerless. Some of the other guys on here like it though. But we really liked the older 8 series.

Strangely enough, we never had any problem with water returning to that boiler. But it looks like only a matter of time before we did. This is one of many reasons we test low-water cutoffs, also why we like copper for return lines.

I wouldn't use PVC that way. If it gets too hot it can soften and change shape. I'd much prefer to have some way of flushing out those return lines every so often.

Koan

@Steamhead

I think I got to it in time (just in time), there was still a path back, but there was not much room left in the vertical part of the Hartford loop or the horizontal run along the floor right before it, probably about 3/8" remained open. I don't know what the flow rate is during operation, but I assume it is small particularity with the return volume being 1,700 x less that the steam from which it condensed.

My bigger fear is the boiler drain valve just dribbled out water and crud, and I imagine there is a lot built up in there. with the large 2-1/2" caps off I can still see water in the boiler level with the bottoms of those caps and the valve is completely removed!

I assume this means there is something blocking the drain cavity in the boiler?? Any advice here would be great as to how to get all this stuff out without major surgery.

I am replacing the boiler drain with a full port and another as a backup. Before a put a new valve in I was thinking of blowing some compressed air in or back-feeding water up into the boiler to clear the obstruction(s).

I think the fact the house sat for a year must have contributed to the issue. I know the blow-downs did not occur on a timely basis, in fact the LWCO float was water-logged at one point fooling the furnace to thinking it was low on water. Even when the original valve was opened, water did not freely flow. At that time, about a year ago, I took apart the LWCO valve and replaced the float, cleaned it out , and put a new valve in (the old original one had failed and once cleaned would not close). The LWCO housing was completely full of grit, grime, and flakes of rust. The new quarter turn ball valve works so much better though.

Having never flushed the wet returns could not have helped; I am assuming this is the case due the lack of a flush valve.

Are you saying it may be better to (in the future) plumb all the wet returns in copper or just the near-boiler larger return?

One note as to the use PVC, the boiler has been down for months with the pilot off so it is dead cold and now empty. No heat to distort the PVC. This is just a stop-gap way to prevent the crap in the horizontal near boiler return from going back into the boiler as much as is feasible. Once I clean everything out it will be removed and I will run a hose into one of the dry return lines for this flushing. This is more of a one time cleaning as I will put valves in the floor wet returns and Hartford loop to allow flushing in the future without blowing crap back up into the boiler. I do not want to wrestle with those 2-1/2" caps again!

As far as the near boiler horizontals, the low water feed goes right into them so I am hoping that may help to keep that clean. I will also put in an extra 1-1/4 junction so that I can completely remove the Hartford loop. I am replacing the Hartford loop piping so it will be clean to start. I am going to try to snake out the 2" return horizontals. I think if I can maintain the annual wet return flushing and 3 x per week blow-downs that should help keep the stuff from building up and being carried up into the Hartford loop from the wet return line on the floor.

Thanks for all your continued input and help!

Kelly

Koan

getting close. All the radiators back. Eleven new trap guts, even polished the caps! Replaced the clogged Hartford loop. Installed flush and close-off valves. Cleaned out the horizontal wet boiler returns(see pic of PVC manifold I made to keep crud out of boiler). Cleaned pounds of gunk from the boiler and the near boiler returns. Flushed the wet returns, replaced the boiler drain valve. Flushed all the radiators, even the 30 section 900 pounder that did not yet get painted. Replaced
the pigtails for the gauge and vapor-stat. Need to hook up the last radiators and refit the piping to adjust for the BJ-2CR vents. I'm thinking this weekend should do it.
Blue line in view one was clogged to about 1/4".

The work is rewarding but not easy. Hats off to you pros