Venting added to 120 year old two pipe steam system

Fred

hrad said:

Hmmmm gauge looks like it is reading pressure? Just put on.

Is it reading pressure when the boiler is not running? Was it at "0" when you installed it? There ate two little screws on the face of the new gauge that you can reset the dial to "0"

If the boiler ran a cycle shortly before, leave the gauge alone, sometimes the gauge will show a little pressure in the system until the main/radiator vents open. see what the gauge says when the system has set idle for a little while.

Koan

Might want to consider pigtails on the vaporstat and gauge??

hrad

I zeroed it out and wilol watch when boiler fires up.

hrad

Koan said:

Might want to consider pigtails on the vaporstat and gauge??

There is pigtail before all

hrad

The BBB wants a document that the contractor did something wrong! He did not have experience or knowledge he claimed to have and has ignored me.

hrad

Every one's comments on this site helped me to make my system operate a lot better. I probably will last a lot longer since new water is not constantly being added.

hrad

No one is perfect but a certified expert should admit he may be wrong. Is there a guild that hydronic pro's belong to?

hrad

What do you think of the following reply I received?
"What I know is that Green Home Solutions replaced your boiler, and opened and closed a permit issued by the City of Cleveland. The research you did and expense you incurred I have no knowledge (or opinion) of. Green Home Solutions maintains their installation was reasonable and customary. I've worked with them for over 15 years, and believe they're one of the best hydronics contractors in the City of Cleveland."

Jamie Hall

Legal boilerplate.

KC_Jones

The basic install doesn't look bad at all, it's the details they missed. This isn't a question of a boiler change out, they need to understand the system it is connected to in order to do a proper job. That response doesn't surprise me.

The issue is permits and inspections have nothing to do with performance, they just make sure the house Isn't going to blow up. They seriously don't care if it works right and most likely don't have the knowledge to even make that judgement.

Unless there was a clause in your contract about system performance this is a dead issue, but voicing your opinion and letting the contractor know doesn't hurt anything. They won't listen since they have been doing this for X years and have refused to learn anything during that time frame. Why would they change now when they have been making money all this time? Send a link to this thread to the contractor and see if they have any interest in education, heck not even this thread just the website would help.

You shouldn't have had to do anything after they are done to get it operating properly. Out of curiosity, how did they size this boiler? Have you done an EDR calculation to see if they even sized it correctly?

My suggestion use Gerry Gill in the future if you can and be done with the others.

LionA29

@hrad you've got the Best steamer there! @gerry gill

hrad

The drain is off lowest pipe but to get all water out I have to take cap off main dirt leg (connects to boiler at lower level). Is that standard practice?

Koan

I saw that too, (the Galvanized els) and wondered the same. I used CI for my re pipe so I could crack them if I had to.

Jamie Hall

hrad said:

The drain is off lowest pipe but to get all water out I have to take cap off main dirt leg (connects to boiler at lower level). Is that standard practice?

Um... sort of. There is a distinct possibility of catastrophe, however, and I wouldn't do it until summer time, when you have a chance to recover...