Weird piping

Dave0176

Well I came across a weird piped system. And it's dead men installed!! It was originally a coal fired system, converted to oil, then replaced by a monkee to a gas conversion with all the wrong piping, he did use steel piping however.

The problem however I see lies in the original piping, it runs to both ends of the house on a bullhead tee of course. The weird thing is the front run is only 1-1/2 main with three runouts, and they split right at the edge of the house to a first floor radiator and to a second floor radiator. So three runouts for 6 radiators. The rear run is only 1-1/4 with two runouts that split. It's the weirdest I've seen so far. There is only one No.1 main vent on the front run, that's it, and it don't look like it works too well judging from the water stains, lol. The couple just bought the house on foreclosure so there is no way to tell if works ok. The return into the boiler is leaking so it needs replacing, the boiler is unfortunately waaaay oversized so that's another issue 150k compared with about 75k btu load.

Just wondering if I should tell this couple install a new properly sized boiler and run two new mains with the proper amounts of runouts, of course I'd basically be installing a whole new system?

New England SteamWorks

Is this a counterflow, or a regular one-piper?

Dave0176

One pipe

Steamhead

You would need to determine the total EDR on each main. It's possible to use piping that small with small EDR loads. Also, they should be parallel-flow (with a drip to a return at the end) rather than counter-flow.

Dave0176

Steamhead said:

You would need to determine the total EDR on each main. It's possible to use piping that small with small EDR loads. Also, they should be parallel-flow (with a drip to a return at the end) rather than counter-flow.

Yes it's a parallel flow single pipe. EDR for the from run is about 150 the rear is about 50. However the runouts are then too small because both radiators on each runout equil about 50-55 EDR, the runout lengths are about 8' of 1-1/4.

Charlie from wmass

It may have been sized before 2 PSI became the standard. This system may need to be run on the pressuretrol setting up 1 psi with a 1-pound differential