Baseray woes.

johncharles

Hi All,

This past summer I bought a house with 1 pipe stream.
The first floor has baseray, with some long runs about 15'. The second floor and finished attic space have 1 pipe radiators. This issue I'm having is a pretty serious temperature gradient between the first floor and the second/third floor.

Basically, by the time the first 3' of any of the baseray runs have heated all the radiators on the second floor are fully charged and pumping out heat.

Since the thermostat is down stairs this is causing long run times, we've had a very high gas bill, not to mention waking up at night to a near 80* bedroom then walking down stairs and realizing that the first floor is struggling to make it past 67*f my night time set point.

I've ordered some much larger steam vents for the baseray which I hope will help somewhat.

The other issue I'm having is that there is water hammer in the baseray from the basement I can tell that the hammer is not in the pipes, but literally in the center of the baseray. I don't know if steam baseray is supposed to be pitched but it is basically level, I put a level on it, and the bubble is mostly level, there is a slight pitch but very slight.

Last, two of the upstairs radiators had TRV's on them, I moved one TRV up to the attic/bedroom which has solved the overheating problem but hasn't done much for the long run times and slow heating of the first floor.

I've also down vented some of the second floor radiators with maid-o-mist #4's which has helped the over heating of the second floor generally. But all that seems to have done is made the system get to a higher pressure more quickly.

Thanks!

neilc

maybe we should be talking about that higher pressure.
what's the boiler set for? and what's it running at?

what do you have for main vents? and where?

maybe vent the upstairs slower,

pictures, boiler, baseray, venting,

the baseray needs to pitch down to the return, no midway sags(?),

johncharles

I checked again with the level, it looks like on the longest one there might be a sag, since both sides seem to be pitched to the middle.

I've opened up the presurtrol and verified that the inside wheel is set to 1.

Here are some photos: (The links are to MS OneDrive)
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi02P-4j3vVg9x708
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi0z1I6MU50-IiNtc
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi0umTz81kmHXcUJ5
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi0m1oftB4wRO6DNp

Also I think my gauges are lying, these two pictures are from over the summer when the system was not running.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPiwY-1kYVd1N-RHCz
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPiwU4jNN4xPRFwYlZ

I'm assuming that my 0-30 is just completely bad, as it seems to just live somewhere in the ether below zero. my 0-3 just seems to be mis-calibrated is there a way to re-calibrate that one?

EBEBRATT-Ed

The Baseray is waterlogged and won't heat. Venting will not fix this one.

You said 1 pipe steam and so I am assuming the Baseray is hooked up 1 pipe. It will never work especially the longer runs.

Pitching the baseray back toward the supply will look like crap but would help

The only answer short of ripping out the Baseray is to convert the baseray to two pipe. In this case it should be pitched towards the return but I would convert it to two pipe and try it before ripping it out to pitch it

their are several ways to do this depending on the configuration of your returns

Or rip out the Baseray and go back to radiators

johncharles

The basray is hooked up on t's let me get you a shot of the underfloor piping, with a steam trap.

johncharles

Baseray piping in basement
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi1PPJvX_8_UKjUQ2
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi1QBev19S0u6ekb2

Radiators on the second floor:
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPinBdZIUcPUW7akKI

EBEBRATT-Ed

First floor . I can't tell from the pictures but it looks like they installed it with a check valve. I don't see a steam trap.

Is the baseray hooked up with 1 pipe or two pipes? Does it have a pipe on each end?

I am guessing they hooked up the supply and return to the baseray to the same pipe and just installed a check valve on the return end. This could be made to work by adding a loop seal if their is no wet return to drip into.

Need more and clearer pictures

neilc

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

Need more and clearer pictures

I can't open the pictures,

johncharles

I drew out a diagram of what it looks like:
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AuWmJjPAlhDPi1X-VXJbRKyCp3Br

I have a bunch of photos, but their all kind of dark, my old phone does not have the best camera.

Neild5

I can't open the pictures either.

neilc

might be a neil thing,
I see one drive is a windows 10 app,
I'm still running 7

johncharles

It should be a website, are you using chrome? Try that? You should not need an app, and windows 7 should be fine, but I can put them on imgur if needs be. What does it say when you try and open them?

neilc

sorry to be off on this tangent,
I just tried chrome and see the same thing,
a blue OneDrive banner, and,
"Sorry, an error has occurred."
"Microsoft OneDrive"

neilc

we broke one drive,
http://downdetector.com/status/onedrive

EBEBRATT-Ed

@johncharles , I looked at your diagram and it's what I thought. They installed a check valve thinking that it would work. The baseray will never heat the way it is installed.

Their may be more than 1 way to fix this. How many runs of baseray do you have like this that will have to be repiped? Where are you located? Have you tried find a contractor on this site??

This can be fixed but requires someone with some steam knowledge that the baseray installer didn't have. There are a few tricks to this that the average plumber or technician may not know how to fix this.

Basically you have the same steam pressure at both ends of the baseray so that it cannot drain

Gsmith

Is the baseray in the same room as the thermostat? If so, that aggravates the issue. I had the same issue, hot upper floors cold first floor, after I (stupidly) replaced a radiator in my first floor living room with about 10 feet of cast iron baseboard set level, but fortunately with steam pipes in to both ends, but no check valve. I have successfully remedied this problem by doing the following (the first few items directed at getting my overall steam system shaped up):
1. Put generous venting on the ends of my steam mains.
2. Insulate the steam mains and near boiler piping.
3. Put one Heat-Timer Varivalve (a very fast vent) in the upper threaded hole in each end of the baseboard AND drilled and tapped two holes in the front center of the baseboard and installed a Heat-Timer Varivalve to vent the center of the baseboard. In this way I successfully got steam to heat the baseboard through its hole length and fortunately did not create any water hammer. I know it looks a little ugly but in my case the baseboard is hidden by a sofa along that wall anyway so few notice.
4. Put Vent-rite #1 adjustable vents on my upper floor radiators to slow them down.
5. (may not be necessary for you but was for me): replaced my old mercury bulb thermostat with an inexpensive ($39) modern thermostat (I think the physical mechanism in my old thermostat was causing the thermostat to not respond quickly and overshoot the temperature setting).

By doing the above, I was able to achieve very comfortable temperatures on all levels of the house, even to the point of reversing the hot upstairs, cold downstairs original situation to a slightly cooler upstairs and warm downstairs with very even heat. As a secondary effect, the boiler now never shuts off on pressure, only on thermostat satisfaction and does not run above 8 oz pressure. Perhaps I was just lucky that the 10 feet of baseboard in the room with the thermostat was enough to adequately heat that room once I got it to heat fast and the upper level radiators to heat more slowly. The basic operation is: vent the steam mains really fast (use large vents like Big Mouths), then vent the baseboard pretty fast to get it heating in the room with the thermostat, lastly vent the upper floors with slower vents ( I like the easy adjustability of the Vent-rite #1's).

Maybe it will work for you, maybe not, but the first few steps are good for any system and venting the baseboard faster is not a difficult or costly thing to do. So not much cost/effort as compared to major system changes that might be recommended. In your case I think you will definitely have to remove the check valve to avoid water hammer and allow steam to enter both ends of the baseboard and condensate to leave both ends. My baseboard was piped with 1" pipe to just near the baseboard end where it was reduced (on the vertical) to 3/4" to match the baseboard threaded inlet/outlet.

Gsmith

Oh, and also check that the pigtail before the pressuretrol is clean, a clogged pigtail or clogged inlet hole to the pressuretrol could cause some of your high pressure issue.

johncharles

The whole ground floor of the house is baseray, the thing is from looking at the sub floor from the basement side, I don't see any place where they might have had radiators installed originally, and the baseray is very old, so I think it might not be a retrofit. Burnham did make baseray around the time the house was built.

From the conversation above, two things:

1) I measured the baseray, the whole ground floor is heated by 4 baseray baseboards. The longest run is 16' long, there are two 11' runs and the shortest is 8'.

The 11' and the 8' runs don't hammer at all, and they also don't sag, so the only run which I'm having a hammer issue is the 16' run which has a sag in the middle.

2) They do heat up, it's less a lack of them heating and more a speed of heating issue, as I said in my OP, if the system runs long enough they all get fully heated it's just that by the time they are 3' loaded the radiators up stairs are fully hot causing a pretty serious temperature difference.

I have larger vents on order I will try that first since it's the simplest and the cheapest. If that doesn't solve or at least improve the issue, then I will call out the guy I had inspect and start up my boiler. The only contractor on this site that is in my geographical area doesn't serve where I live.

Gsmith

First steps: check pigtail for clogging; increase steam main venting; increase rate of 16' baseray venting; slow down upstairs radiator venting (I recommend variable radiator vents to help with balancing).

EBEBRATT-Ed

Last try.
It's not piped right.
Period.
Venting will not fix it.

Wishing it was piped right will not fix it.

By some of Dan's books. Start with "lost art of steam heat" your problem is in that book. You don't have to believe me

johncharles

So you've (EBEBRATT-Ed) mentioned several times that the piping is not right, but what would be right in this case?

The steam is entering the supply, there is a check valve that stops steam from rising on the return side, and there is an air vent to let out the air.

What specifically would be the correct piping. And what specifically is wrong with the current piping?

Given that steam clearly is entering the baseray, and air is definitely leaving the baseray?

EBEBRATT-Ed

@johncharles , whats wrong with the piping is the fact that you said it doesn't heat.

I will try to explain but it would be best if you had Dans book.

1. One pipe steam is generally connected to short fat radiators with 1 pipe.....hence 1 pipe steam. That one pipe carries both steam (top of the pipe) and condensate...water...or condensed steam (flowing in the opposite direction in the bottom of the pipe) The radiator must be pitched low end on the pipe end.
2. Because Base Ray is long and thin compared to a radiator it doesn't work as well on steam when hooked up with 1 pipe.
If you pitch it it is so long it will look like crap . And because it is so long water is trapped in it and can't get out due to the lack of pitch. So only short sections of BaseRay will work with 1 pipe connected
3.The solution is to hook BaseRay up with TWO pipes. 1 pipe lets steam in 1 end and the condensate flows out the other end.
This requires a supply pipe (steam in) and a condensate pipe(water out).
4. The problem is both your supply and return connections from the baseray are connected to the same pipe in the basement because you have guess what A 1PIPE STEAM SYSTEM. You don't have a separate return line which would then be called a TWO PIPE STEAM SYSTEM.
5.
because both base ray pipes are connected to the same main in the basement both pipes are under the same STEAM pressure on both supply and return. Steam pressure traps water in the baseray and it can't drain thus no heat.


But all is not lost. There are several fixes that will make it (baseray) work fine (unless you want to rip out the baseray and put radiators back).

Fix #1 Run a return line around the basement floor and tie each pc of baseray (return side only ) into the new return line. Caution all baseray must be connected below the boiler water line to make a water seal.

Fix #2 Drop the return from each baseray down to the celler floor and make a loop and come back up into the existing steam main. You must come into the bottom of the steam main ..not the top.
Fix #3 Run a dry return from each pc of baseray back to the boiler. Drop all the new returns down and connect together below the boiler water line and into the boiler

Fix #1 is the less amount of work followed by #3 then #2.

But it depends on the layout of your basement and any obstructions. You may have to use a combination of options

It will never work right the way it is, you might as well accept that.

You need a contractor that understands steam which may or may not be the local plumber. All the check valves and copper tubing in the world won't fix this.

You came here for help and I spent the time to explain it to you.

Now it's your choice what to do. Take any short cuts and it won't work

johncharles

A sort of epilogue,

The base-ray was piped wrong I'm sure, but even when it did fully heat it just could not put out the BTU's that my house seems to need. Even with the boiler running constantly it would still be in the low 60 degrees.

So I don't have baseray anymore:



I had 5 huge radiators installed which is what I wanted and it is now finally warm on my first floor. I will need to take them out and clean them up this summer since they are all in pretty rough shape as far as paint goes.

I have not done the calculation but I'm pretty sure my boiler was over sized, but now I think it's pretty much matched It was able to keep the house at 70 through a few nights -10F outside which is pretty much the extreme for where I live and the pressure gauge almost never seems to make it past 1psi, but the whole house is warm so I am happy.

I kept the baseray had them stack it all in the basement, eventually I want to finish part of the basement and at that point long in the future I would like to install a single HW loop and have the baseray on HW for the finished segment of the basement. But that's a long way off.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Well, I guess that's one way to fix it

nicholas bonham-carter

Thanks for the update-we love hearing the end of the story.