Near boiler piping

tlavite

Got a question about my near boiler piping... it just doesn’t seem right to me. I have no formal knowledge in one pipe steam heating but I have read books and quite a bit of stuff over the last couple of years owning this system. I’ve done allot of Maintinence to this system since I moved in and did allot of work to balance my system. It works perfectly for me but my big question is boiler cycle times... for instance once it fires up and finally hits full pressure which is 2psi how long should the system be able to hold that pressure before bleeding off and kicking back on? My system seems to bleed it’s pressure off quite quick. But the near boiler piping looks nothing like everything else I have seen in my 3 years of research and playing with my system.

Jamie Hall

Well, the near boiler piping is perhaps a little unusual -- but that has nothing whatever to do with how long it's going to take the steam in the radiators to condense once the burner shuts off and the pressure drops to the cutin level (or lower, if there is a longish post purge and prepurge). In a more direct answer to your question, the system won't hold pressure at all -- the pressure will start to drop immediately when the boiler cuts out. Depending on the size of the system, if might take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute or two for it to drop to the cutin.

tlavite

Thanks for the response. Sounds like it’s operating normally then I have 8 relatively large radiators in my house 2 stories. So once it shuts off after reaching pressure it takes about a minute or 2 before the cut in happens. At least I know now that’s within normal time.

Dave0176

You have a Weil-McLain EG50. It definitely needs to be repiped it’s completely wrong.

Fred

And it is likely over sized and/or has very poor main venting. In reality, a properly sized boiler with good venting should never depend on the Pressuretol to shut the burner down. It should maybe run a few ounces to a pound of pressure.

EBEBRATT-Ed

It's a perfect example of a boiler piped wrong...but likely works. If you get no banging, water hammer, spitting vents...your lucky

JUGHNE

Your main air vent hiding up in the rafters could be bigger.
But upgrade will be limited by the riser nipple size.

As Ed said, another example of a really badly piped boiler that fairly works OK.

You can download the install manual for that to see the minimal piping requirement.

tlavite

Surprisingly it has no water hammer at all and no vents spit any water... like I said the system seems to operate perfectly fine. The main does need upgraded I’m gonna tap that pipe for a larger riser. When I moved in the main vent it did have was clogged like crazy and half the vents on the rads didn’t work either. Plus all valves needed repacked and I had to replace one rad for a big crack in it.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Just be advised if you change the venting and because of the less than ideal boiler piping you could upset the dynamic and cause a problem. If you do you could always change the vents back