Second floor getting too hot

cynthia07104

After fixing the air vent placement on 3 of our radiators on the second floor it is getting extremely hot. It is almost 5 degrees hotter than the 1st floor. We have DAV 5 vents upstairs and I believe all of downstairs has 4’s... Would installing smaller air vents upstairs allow the radiators to heat up less??

We decided to fix the air vent placement as the radiators were not heating completely leaving us with cold rooms of course now we are faced with the opposite situation.

Gsmith

yes. Generally the order of corrective work for unbalances one-pipe steam systems is: check pressuretrol for correct (low) settings; good steam main venting; insulate steam mains; then adjust radiators vents by putting slower vents on rooms that are too hot and slightly faster vents on rooms that are too cold. You generally get better results by slowing down the hot rooms first.

I personally like the Ventrite #1 adjustable vents, good quality and easily adjustable.

cynthia07104

@Gary Smith Going to work on balancing this system.. we did have some adjustable vents but the varivalve kind. I have since read those are not ideal as even on the lowest setting they tend to vent fast.

Gsmith

I agree don’t use varivalve vents, I suggested ventrite 1, they are made by a different company and physically look and are very different.

ksd99

Ventrite 1 are the best, Ive used Dole and Hoffman and neither come close to the quality and ease to the vent rite.

WillNH

+1 to the vent-rites! The second floor of my house was also getting way too hot. All the radiator and main vents in my house were old and not working so well. I replaced the main vents with big mouths and the radiator vents with vent-rite 1s, and like magic everything is better. One nice thing about the vent-rites is that you can really turn them down to deal with rooms that are too hot.