Knucklehead Mania!!

BrianT1077

Hello everyone! I thought I would show some work that a knucklehead did in my house at some point in the past before I lived there. Now my kitchen rad and 2nd flr bathroom rad have never operated correctly like the others in the house. Kitchen rad takes a long time to get heat, and the 2nd flr bathroom rad rarely ever heats but sometimes on a long cycle in the super cold, but not always. I do know that the kitchen rad was moved in the past. From what I can figure out is that someone remodeled the kitchen and also changed a bit of the layout. I guess when they started moving and remodeling things, there were some pipes in the way. So they rerouted some plumbing for the 2nd flr bathroom along with the steam pipe that was originally attached to the capped off run out I found off the larger main in the basement. Then they decided to use the original kitchen rad run out and connect the kitchen rad's new location with copper as you can see in the pics, along with hacking up some floor joists. To make matters even worse, they placed a copper tee in this new run out and branched the 2nd floor bathroom's rad off of this!!! So you have 2 rads on one copper run out with a smaller diameter pipe. Sounds like this guy knew what he was doing! Knuckleheads! There usually is a banging in my kitchen wall during longer cycles. Now to fix all of this I think the kitchen rad will be the easiest, get rid of the copper pipe and put in proper diameter black pipe and reinforce the hacked up floor joists. Also at this point I think I would have to run the new pipe through the hacked up joists. For the 2nd flr bathroom, not so easy, I am going to have to open one of the walls (approx. original steam pipe location) in the kitchen as well as part of the ceiling to pipe the original capped off run out in the basement to the 2nd flr bathroom rad. Now the locations of the copper run out to the 2nd flr bathroom rad and the location to where the original run out connected to the rad are different, by I would say 8-10 feet and ran up a different wall, not the original wall. So I really hope no floor joists for the second floor under the bathroom were hacked to run that copper pipe to the rad, because you can see that the kitchen ceiling was opened up at some time. Of course I would like to get this all fixed eventually because the system will never operate correctly unless it is done and my wife always reminds me that the 2nd flr bathroom is cold. I learned a lot from reading We Got Steam Heat over the course of last winter and recently @Dave0176 did see most of this wonderful knucklehead's piping job. Thankfully from what I can gather, the rest of the house's rads and original piping off the 2 mains have never been touched with 1 exception. The rad in the master bedroom was flipped to the other side of the pipe which I suspected due to it was not in front of the window and I found rad feet impressions in the hardwood flooring. Measurements confirmed this. But no problem with the master bedroom rad, it works well. So I just thought I would share this issue on The Wall for everyone to read about. Any questions or thoughts, please ask. Also please comment if you wish.

Jamie Hall

The wonder is that it works at all...

Dave0176

Yeah it's unbelievable.......

Steamhead

Proving once again that you can't fix stupid.

Koan

guess he kinda has to?

EBEBRATT-Ed

Saw one the other day. A Utica steamer. Header undersized and not 24" above the waterline. Installed 30 years ago. I asked the customer how it runs, how's the heat?

Claims it runs great. I asked if it was noisy, any pipes banging?? Nope, works fine.

It might run better if it was piped right but.............

Paul S_3

9 out of 10 steamers are not piped correctly....they work sometimes...i once saw an 1.5" header on a 150k boiler, customer said everything heats fine....but we as professionals do this every day, if we take shortcuts some installs will come back to haunt us...thats why i pipe all my steamers correctly.....from what i see in the field day in and day out is that most improperly piped boilers and steam systems work.....it may not be efficient or quiet, but it gets hot and sadly thats just what some customers want....this is why in this steam filled city of mine i do not close every job, contractors can under cut my quote by 50% and get the home or building hot

Hap_Hazzard

Is that insulation what I think it is?

Koan

@Hap_Hazzard - looks like asbestos

BrianT1077

@Koan, Yes I am going to get those radiators piped correctly, hopefully soon within the next year. As I said, the kitchen rad barely heats all the way across and the bathroom rad rarely gets heat at all even on long cycles, the valve for the bathroom rad is always mostly cold. It will never operate correctly unless it is fixed properly. @Hap_Hazzard, The insulation you see is asbestos, thankfully it is contained between the basement ceiling and 1st floor joists. The only asbestos I have seen is on the 1 main in the parts you can't access due to the ceiling. I am sure there is probably some in the walls going to the 1st and 2nd floor. But the previous owners redid the dining room, and the 1 wall which contains the riser that goes to the master bedroom on the 2nd floor is in that wall and I believe it is not insulated due to the wall having a hot spot that runs from floor to ceiling. They probably removed the asbestos and left it bare. Again, knuckleheads. How hard would it have been to re-insulate that pipe before putting up new dry wall? Every house is a 2 story house, 1 story before you move in and another story after you move in.

Koan

The 2 story house comment is golden!
I'm finding the same differing stories on the 1928 house I'm now in.
Here's another - "The work on your house always looks great when viewed from the Knucklehead's house"
Good luck @BrianT1077 - sounds like you are headed in the right direction.
I am surprised though at how many steam installations are not well done and how much good work is represented here on Heatinghelp.com.

BrianT1077

@Koan, thank you! I heard that comment somewhere as a kid and I never forgot it. The knucklehead house one is good also. Again thank you, I am hoping soon to have my steam heat system all squared away.