2 Children Killed In Radiator Mishap In Bronx Apartment

mookie3333

Sad. What could have caused this? Faulty pressuretrol? Clogged pigtail? I'm no expert, but don't buildings like these usually have multiple pressure regulators?

http://abc7ny.com/news/2-kids-killed-in-radiator-mishap-in-bronx-apartment/1644053/

KC_Jones

mookie3333 said:

What could have caused this?

My money is on lack of maintenance.

DanHolohan

Steam will displace the air in the room. They probably suffocated.

This is not the first time this has happened in NYC. Some people loosen or remove the vents to try to get more heat. Other times, the vents are damaged and not maintained. It's tragic.

Fred

Really sad! I can't imagine how a valve would "Pop Off" I'm betting it was probably a radiator vent. If it was truly a valve, it had to be loose and in bad disrepair. Children have to be watched so closely. There is no way they should be that close to a steaming hot radiator. Hind sight is always 20/20.

DanHolohan

Every case I've seen, it was always the vent, and always kids in a room with the door closed.

KC_Jones

@Fred they don't need to be close to it to die. If the pressure was too high and the vent came off there could have been a massive release of steam. As Dan said it displaces the oxygen and suffocates people.

I'm sure I have told this story before, but here it is again. My father worked in power plants for 32 years and used to take me on tours. He pointed at the main steam feed to the turbine once and said "If that pipe bursts everyone in the plant will be dead within a few seconds". He wasn't kidding. It's a great heat source, but too many don't respect it as they should.

Fred

@KC_Jones , They said the children were burned but I guess in the initial reporting all the facts are still not known.

DanHolohan

This is why at every steam seminar I did I warned those who work on steam boilers never to close the boiler-room door. A popped safety can kill you.

KC_Jones

To die from burns that quickly would have had to melt their skin completely off. It says the mom was trying to revive them, that makes me think suffocation. Usually death from burns takes days and typically it's from infection.

I'd bet the news doesn't know and they are guessing that since it's steam it's burns or I am completely wrong. We will probably never know for sure.

Fred

The size of children that age would put them down pretty low. Inhaling steam certainly would cause internal burns, especially to the lungs and collapse them but like you said, we'll probably never know all the facts. This is just a tragedy.

MilanD

Oh my, tragic...

DanHolohan

Steam rooms are usually about 115 degrees with 100% humidity. We're not supposed to stay in there for more than 20 minutes. Imagine a small, closed bedroom with steam pouring out of a hole in a radiator for eight hours or more. The kids may be in cribs. It's always horrible, and we can never be too vigilant.

STEAM DOCTOR

So sad. @Dan Holohan. I think that you referenced one of these stories in we got steam heat. My mom actually knew the young woman who removed the air vent. If memory serves me right, she was babysitting her niece. Double tragedy. One is the death of the poor baby and one is the life long guilt of the poor babysitter. She probably didn't know any better and was advised by some "expert" to remove the air vent so the baby would be warm. So so sad

DanHolohan

Back in my rep days (we sold Hoffman), a child died in a steamed-up bedroom with a closed door. Eyewitness News shot a close-up of the Hoffman #40 vent on the floor near the radiator as the reporter said, "This is the valve that killed the baby."

That was difficult.

STEAM DOCTOR

Yup. That's the one. My mom knew the family. Just watch the government try to ban steam or air vents or whatever else makes for a self righteous headline

Gordy

I'm with KC suffocation. Tragic, what are the odds even though this type of incident has happened before.

All forms of heating has dangers more so from CO across all types.

delta T

Updated now says 'A city official said a valve cap appears to have been blown off a radiator, possibly by the force of the steam'. I wonder what they mean by 'valve cap'. Would certainly make sense for it to be an air vent. There was another article which described the girls as having turned purple. Sounds like suffocation to me.....

So sad. Thoughts and prayers with that poor family.

DanHolohan

Air vent or supply valve bonnet?

PMJ

One more reason not to run on pressure at all. My boiler is only going to run around 40% of a given hour broken into three cycles leak or not. There would always be a lot of time for leaked steam to collapse and air to return. A significant leak in a closed bedroom with a pressure controlled system - even very low pressure - would be a much worse situation than I would have. Much more steam could potentially be released due to the pressure, and the uninterrupted run time significantly lengthened due to the pressure cutoff not being satisfied the way it usually is.

Question: Anyone have any kind of numbers to put to how often this has occurred? I'd never actually heard of it. I would think it must be quite rare.

DanHolohan

I've heard of it happening several times. Once is too many.

delta T

DanHolohan said:

Air vent or supply valve bonnet?

Have you (or any one else here) ever heard of a valve bonnet coming off? seems like the necessary pressure for this (assuming the valve to be in decent shape) would be blowing the relief valve long before it blew the bonnet off a valve. Obviously we are speculating without any real information here, but it does sound like it was something sudden and forceful, so.....packing disintegrated small steam leak, packing nut starts to corrode, eventually bonnet corrodes until it finally gives out? Maybe? Would take quite a long time, and there would be lots of warning signs.....Not saying this is unlikley, just trying to figure out what this could have been.

DanHolohan

Could have someone with a wrench.

delta T

DanHolohan said:

Could have someone with a wrench.

Very true

gerry gill

Im shocked..i don't know what to say. I would not have thought that possible..and yet as Dan says, it has happened before..there is shop safety training agenda coming out of this thread..i feel so bad for the family. Devastating.

Mad Dog_2

I'll bet pressure was higher than needed and accelerated a bad situation. Horrid. Mad Dog

Mad Dog_2

Reports first said "exploding" radiator...now they were "burned" by steam. We shall see. Mad Dog

Mad Dog_2

Parents probably put them down for a quiet nap..closed the door. I really can't stand when people complain about getting old. When we went to Ireland a few summers ago, I bought a refrigerator magnet:
"GETTING OLD IS A GIFT AND A PRIVILEGE DENIED MANY! Tis true. Poor babies. Mad Dog

hboogz

Live in Queens and saw this last night on the local news -- it's so horrific and sad. Hope the parents setup some type of gofundme , would love to help them a bit.

been wondering the same thing -- what exactly happened? they keep talking about a radiator exploding and valve popping off, that seems extreme. As Dan mentioned , someone took the air vent off completely perhaps ?

either way, this is sad

Harry

hboogz

also, in NYC with a building that size, there had to have been two pressuretrols. Question is, were they checked and/or actually working... This is gut-wrenching.

Mad Dog_2

I don't care what industry standard is, I ALWAYS take the Manual reset pressuretrol down to atleast 5 p.s.i.....No reason on a l.p. system to have it higher. Mad Dig

hboogz

latest info: http://nypost.com/2016/12/08/baby-sisters-burned-to-death-were-sleeping-next-to-radiator-that-exploded/

Fred

What a horrible death.

ChrisJ

It seems very odd.

They didn't scream? A steam vent blew off of a radiator, I assume due to excess pressure and no one heard that?


From another related article, people complaining about the radiators.
http://nypost.com/2016/12/08/residents-complained-about-radiators-before-tots-tragic-deaths/

"“The radiator starts steaming and the walls get wet. It gets to a point where you can’t see anything,’’ Livingston said. “You hear ‘pop,’ [and] the stuff under the radiator explodes.”"




It sounds like the system was in desperate need of repair and the slumlord knew it.

Mad Dog_2

On old radiators the tappings can get kinda loose and the vent could fall off in your hand. I still say pressure was higher than 2 p.s.i. Mad Dog

SlamDunk

I wouldnt assume excess pressure yet. As a Bronx kid who grew up in an apt buiding I can confess that I used to hang from those vents all the time when radiators werent hot. And when they didnt seal, we never reported it- it reduced static electricity, they were considered humidifiers, never had a bloody nose from dry air. In fact, we held our stuffy noses over it when we had colds.

My guess is vent treads were compromised.

My brother replaced one on the top of a riser in his house. It didnt hold! by the time we got up there, it was a foggy rain forest. We couldnt get near it. we had to wait. he runs around 1psi.

Mad Dog_2

Well see, but based on the reports of them dying by burning, not suffocation, I'm saying higher pressure AND some other stuff that doesn't make sense. We're they left alone too long? a two year old is able to walk or crawl away from something that's burning them..screams... Well see, but I'm betting there's more to this story. Mad Dog

STEAM DOCTOR

I wounder if the radiator was propped up with shims under the vent side of the radiator and with nothing under the valve side of the radiator. The weight of the radiator could have snapped the valve, particularly if somehow the shims came out from under the vent side. I have seen this happen

Mad Dog_2

NY post showed them removing the "bad" radiator. So much for being able have several knowledgeable people in to assess what actually happened. The man that was with company removed it said to paraphrase "...sometimes they just pop off when pressure is too high." Read the article yourself. As I said above, looks like other extenuating circumstances probably lead to this terrible loss. Mad Dog

KC_Jones

Mad Dog said:

"...sometimes they just pop off when pressure is too high."

Translation: I have no idea what I am talking about, but I am on the news and will spew some random garbage that the public wants to hear.

Why is this country afraid of honesty? Without being there I think most if not all of us know this was a maintenance issue or a neglect issue. Why is the news or the powers that be afraid to say that? To protect other children we need honesty, blaming the rad is stupid and helps no one.

Here is he exact quote from the article:
too much pressure from the steam can cause the valves to pop off.
“When there is too much pressure, the whole thing blows,” he said.
The amount of pressure that would take with everything installed properly is way beyond the safety limits installed on the boiler. Again don't just say pressure say why there was that much pressure. The landlord is a deadbeat and doesn't take care of the property and it killed 2 children today.

It's tragic and sugar coating it will kill more children in the future.

ChrisJ

KC_Jones said:

Mad Dog said:

"...sometimes they just pop off when pressure is too high."

Translation: I have no idea what I am talking about, but I am on the news and will spew some random garbage that the public wants to hear.

Why is this country afraid of honesty? Without being there I think most if not all of us know this was a maintenance issue or a neglect issue. Why is the news or the powers that be afraid to say that? To protect other children we need honesty, blaming the rad is stupid and helps no one.

Here is he exact quote from the article:
too much pressure from the steam can cause the valves to pop off.
“When there is too much pressure, the whole thing blows,” he said.
The amount of pressure that would take with everything installed properly is way beyond the safety limits installed on the boiler. Again don't just say pressure say why there was that much pressure. The landlord is a deadbeat and doesn't take care of the property and it killed 2 children today.

It's tragic and sugar coating it will kill more children in the future.

Curious what the PSI rating of an 1/8" thin brass NPT connector is.
It's a whole lot more than 15 PSI I bet.

Why is the country afraid of honesty?
Because a news article like this is a lot more interesting, and unique than the truth. Well, what I personally believe the truth to be based on the little bit of evidence supplied. TV and radio are controlling the people, not the other way around. People want honesty, they never get it and they are not quick to question things.

Our news is there to sell a product, not fact and not honesty. It's job is to sell, sell, sell. Not to inform.

Also let's not forget how they question people. They interview people, ask a ton of questions, often to get specific responses from people and then edit the footage to show what they want it to. Much like "reality shows" do. Remember Obama's "You didn't build that!" comment which was actually in regards to public highways and such? Same thing.

That's my opinion anyway.

KC_Jones

If you look up the raw rating for 1/8" NPT brass threads it's in the thousands of psi. There is a de-rate for temperature, but it isn't enough to get down to 15 PSI or less.