Splitting a Church Steam System

Steamhead

This is the North Baltimore Mennonite Church, originally Roland Park Methodist.

The building was built in two sections- first the sanctuary, then the fellowship hall and nursery. Originally the system used indirect radiators, but these were replaced with free-standing radiators as they failed. Our first job here, several years ago, was to upgrade the main vents.

It appeared from the piping that there might have been two boilers originally, but what we found was a Burnham V-907 with the usual leaky welded header. The device in the rear is a heat exchanger for a disused hot-water loop:






The church wanted to switch to gas, so we ran a 2-inch gas line last year and waited and waited for BGE to install a larger gas service and meter.

Well, the Burnham started leaking. When considering a replacement, they said they'd love to be able to separate the two parts of the building to avoid heating the sanctuary when it wasn't needed. Sooooooooo.....................

Steamhead

We decided to install two separate Weil-McLain boilers- a 4-80 for the hall and an SGO-6 for the sanctuary, both with Carlin gas burners.

Here are some construction pics. The church got a work crew to dismantle the old boiler (after we'd disconnected everything) and pour two new concrete pads. Note the 6-inch header up in the ceiling where all the mains tied in. Whoever installed the Burnham used a concentric reducer on the steam piping, and cut off the drip line, which made for about 1-1/2" of water standing in there- and it was off-pitch to boot. Believe it or not, it didn't bang. We removed the sanctuary half of that header- miraculously, we found a 6x1-1/4" threaded reducing 90 to hook up a drip. We also got rid of a couple other water pockets we found.

Steamhead

All done!

The last pic is a pair of "fan center relays" that power the digital thermostats with 24 volts and switch the 24-volt thermostat contacts on the boiler primaries.

And we found a couple old whiskey bottles, posing them proudly on the emergency switches.

I still can't seem to get these vertical pics to display properly......

brandonf

Nice work 👍

EzzyT

Beautiful work as always Frank and Gordo.

Phil53

Nice touch with the whiskey bottles. A Tribute to the dead men that decided to celebrate in the boiler room. Or maybe the clergy seeking to relax after dealing with the church politics of the congregation.

EBEBRATT-Ed

HAHA Nice job. Drinking whiskey in the church!!

Steamhead

Seems our ancestors weren't the squeaky-clean people we were told they were.........

delta T

Looks great, nice work as always!

BobC

@EBEBRATT-Ed Remember the scene in Porky's where the town elders were watching skin flicks in the basement of town hall?

I went to a catholic technical high school in the early 60's, the priests and brothers lived on the 5th floor. i remember a large liquor distributor truck would pull up a couple of times a year and unload case after case of liquor and wine which any student in the area would carry into the elevator and then into the provisions locker up on the 5th floor.

Bob

Steamhead

BobC said:

@EBEBRATT-Ed Remember the scene in Porky's where the town elders were watching skin flicks in the basement of town hall?

Gordo

@Erin Holohan Haskell : I humbly ask, if it is possible, for you to rotate and repost the sideways pictures in this thread?

My thanks for your consideration in this matter!

Double D

Erin Holohan Haskell

Thanks, @Double D!

aceboiler

In that last picture they have a pressure reducing valve before the 101 feeder. I guess it works the same as a hot water system just a different application?
I have never seen that done before?
I guess it would help if it was overfeeding?
Thanks for the pictures.

Steamhead

Might have been an attempt to keep the boiler from over-filling.

New England SteamWorks

Very nice!