Was wondering what my original steam setup was... Any thoughts?

Steampunker

Hi all! I recently purchased a house built in 1901 with a steam heat system. Lat month I purchased (and read), "The Lost Art of Steam Heating", and found it fascinating! I've identified many things going on in the basement, but some aspects of the piping are kinda peculiar!

It looks to me that there used to be another boiler set off to the side of the current one (there's a slab, and I think, and old boiler vent), but am not sure. I'm also puzzled by the huge pipes, and 2 levels of mains (?).

If anyone wants to look at the pictures and give their opinions, I'd be grateful!

ChrisJ

Fascinating.

Two headers, and both are built wrong.

That boiler needs to be repiped.

Fred

How does it heat? Any problems with water levels? Radiators not heating? water hammer? If not, I wouldn't bother changing that near boiler piping until the next boiler change-out. Those large headers can be very forgiving. Do you have good main venting on each main? I'd focus on that and try to keep the system pressure down.
Looks like a double Hartford loop, of sorts, and both look like they are above the boiler water line. That probably does give you some water hammer and should be corrected.

Steampunker

Thanks for the replies!
It heats fine, with no water hammer. I THINK it's got a regular Hartford Loop (seen in the second 2 pictures). I think there are at least 3 vents on the mains coming off of the second (lower) header. As I said, the heater works fine, but am very curious. From my recent reading, I think I have to make sure those main vents are healthy and functioning.

Steampunker

You know... perhaps the original boiler was lower (and off to the side), and so when the new higher boiler was put in, the header was too low, so they added that new higher header and connected it to the lower one, so they wouldn't have to re-pipe from the old header.

Canucker

ChrisJ said:

Fascinating.

Two headers, and both are built wrong.

That boiler needs to be repiped.

At least it's not copper?

Fred

I don't think either of those headers look completely original. The drip end of the lower one looks original but the other end looks newer. I would guess that large Tee in the center of the taller header was where the old boiler tied into the bull of the Tee and the Mains took off of each end of the Main. Probably didn't have a header and someone tried to accommodate the risers out of a replacement boiler (maybe even before the current one) and then create a newer drop header for the the mains. Dropped to accommodate the larger size pipe, into that lower header with a Drip so that water wouldn't be trapped. It's almost anyone's guess.

JUGHNE

My guess is there was two boilers for redundancy.
That 4-5" plug may have been where the second boiler connected.....does it look newer than the rest of the larger header?
Maybe both were removed for this new one.
Do you have enough steam on the coldest days?
Do your rads heat all the way across on the coldest days?

Danny Scully

You know what I've found, is that sometimes people had an oil boiler and a gas boiler. There was usually a series of isolation valves so they could switch between boilers/fuels depending upon which was cheaper at the time.