Pipe pitch off of boiler

foresthillsjd

Hi everyone, one pipe steam here. I was looking at my boiler the other day, and am planning on neatening up the insulation at the neater and insulate all the supply pipes in the basement, but I noticed one pipe is pitched down away from the boiler. Is it supposed to be like that? How would the condensation drain from the bottom of that pitch?

Jamie Hall

Good question. But the picture doesn't go far enough. What's at the other end of that pipe? A pipe pitched that way is quite common -- it's a parallel flow main -- but at the other end there should be a vertical pipe, referred to as a drip, which goes down to a wet return back to the boiler.

mikeg2015

Need more info. If it’s a counterflow and that riser goes off to feed part of the house, then it need a drip back to the boiler.

If it’s parallel flow and their continuous around the basement and becomes the return, then that’s normal. Can have multiple parallel flow headers. On 1 pipe parallel flow, the main is also the return and all the laterals are then all counterflow.