new steam user. advice needed

1peterpan1

Hello,

I recently bought a house with steam heat system. I never saw it before and was very puzzled by the complexity. Sorry if my post is repeating the question which were asked here many times but it is hard for me at this point even understand if my situation is similar to the other posts.
As far as understand I have a single pipe system with Burnham 210BTU furnace.

First floor of the house has 3 50" radiators and one tiny 9" radiator which for some strange reason doesn't have a valve (see picture). Second floor has 6 radiators of total length about 15'. Some steam pipes in the basement had asbestos insulation which I removed recently.
Please see the pictures of the burner. In general everything works but there are things I don't like and would like to get fixed.
1. Whistling sound from the radiator vents. When the heat turns on some radiator valves start to produce very loud whistling sound. After reading this forum I did a few things to try to fix it myself. I replaced the vales on the radiators for the new ones. I replaced the main vents with Gorton #1. The whistling still continued. Then I noticed that the main pressure level was maxed out to 15 psi on the regulator. I dropped it down to ~2 psi. (See picture) but now it takes a while for the radiators to become hot and for some reason the boiler doesn't stay on until all radiators are hot. It shuts off pretty quickly and then comes back on in a little while.
2. One radiator (unfortunately it is the one in the bedroom) makes periodic banging sound in similar time intervals when heating. The sound is not very loud but annoying. I checked with my phone and the radiator seems to be level.
3. Temperature in the bedroom on the second floor sometime drops too low until the thermostat on the first floor in the living room will enable the heat. (Any good thermostat recommendations? Powith wireless sensors.)
4. Small white radiator without the valve. I think they didn't install the valve because there is not enough room to open the door in that bathroom. When the boiler heats up the radiator starts to let steam out from the little hole where the valve supposed to be. I was wondering if there is something I can do to make this radiator work properly with a valve so that the door can open.
5. I would like to heat basement(~300 sq.f) and kitchen (~300sq.f) with hot water baseboards. (They have electric baseboards now). The plumber who I asked said to me that my furnace has enough capacity to add two zones with forced hot water. One for the kitchen and one for the basement, but he will need to make a transfer from the steam boiler to hot water. How reasonable this idea is? Are there any gotchas I need to be aware of?
6. Please recommend a knowledgeable contractor who can possibly fix all those issues and educate me along the way. I'm in Belmont, MA.

Thank you!

Mad Dog_2

Go to The Find a Contractor section above and see who is close to you. Several great Steam guys in Mass. Not sure where u are. Good luck. Mad Dog

EBEBRATT-Ed

a lot to dig through. Start with finding out the EDR of the installed radiators and report on this so we can see if the boiler is the correct size and to also decide if it has enough capacity to heat the new hot water zone.

Looks like the installer knew something about steam

Jamie Hall

With regard to "it takes a while and the boiler cuts out" -- several possibilities, but the most likely is that there is inadequate main venting (or even non-existent!!). That would be valves -- vents -- on the ends of the steam mains in the basement.

That small white radiator is cute -- but you will want to put a steam vent on it. There are vents which will fit even with the door open.

As @Mad Dog said, the thing to do is find a good steam man in your area. Belmont... hmm... @Charlie from wmass may go that far east, and he is one of the very best. Look him up.

You should also get at least one of the books available from the store on this site -- "We Got Steam Heat". Good place to start.

1peterpan1

Using the Columbia heating guide I calculated the total EDR as ~300. Or about 71k BTU

1peterpan1

I just replaced the main vents. There are 2 of them. You can see them on one of the pictures. I installed Gorton #1.

Fred

- Those Gorton #1 vents most likely are not enough to vent the air out of the mains and the steam is pushing the air out through the radiator vents.
- Radiators should not be level. They should pitch back slightly (1/4" to 1/2" towards the supply valve end of the radiator so condensate can run back down that supply pipe. That may be why you hear some noise from that radiator. The noise could also be expansion noise. Cutting some small discs out of milk cartons and putting one under each foot of the radiator may solve that problem.
- The reason the upstairs gets colder than the first floor is because the radiators need to be balanced. That is done by the size of the vent that is used on the radiators. Slower vents on the first floor, a little faster ones on the second floor. You can also use adjustable vents, like the Hoffman 1A or others that allow you to adjust the venting speed from radiator to radiator. BUT, you don't want to try to balance the radiators until you get enough venting on the mains.
If you can get @Charlie from wmass to look your system over, he is your man.
Also, you need to calculate the total EDR of your radiators to determine if the boiler is properly sized. It may be over sized, as they typically are.
One pipe steam systems are very simple systems and, once you get familiar with it, you will be able to resolve most of your issues without much problem but get Charlie in there to get it right the first time.

Dave0176

First things first, the header is too small on that boiler for 210,000 BTU. Burnham install install manual calls for 3" header.