Infrared Video of a Two-Pipe Steam Radiator Heating "Museum"

Gordo

Check out these beauties!
To save time to get to a good part, maybe start at about 3:50 on the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaNWHH6tZIA

Larry Weingarten

Nice! Was fun seeing just how fast the one radiator heated once the valve was opened. It's easy to imagine the radiators are in a rather nice home. We get to go interesting places!

Yours, Larry

Steamhead

Here's where this is:

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/151036/lovely-lane-methodist-church-a-steam-heating-museum

I believe these are Nason radiators. But the piping tells me they weren't original- they come up underneath the rads instead of at the ends. We found the answer in a small storage room- see the rad at 0:50 . It looks somewhat like a Clogston, and its pipes connect underneath. We think the chapel's main room had these originally, and they were changed at some point, possibly because the originals were undersized.

Gordo

Update: Went back the next day and removed all air vents (Hoffman #40s), tightened packing nuts and re-packed as needed and fired the system. Sorta expected many of the radiators that were not deliberately shut off (one massive radiator in a small room for instance, the second one shown in the video) to simply stop working.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that only one radiator stopped heating. So, one trap failed closed it seems.

Turned it back on, pulled the plug were the air vent was and it started to bang, then the pipes to that radiator starting getting hot. Put the plug back in!

I've got an infrared video of that if you want to see it.

Suspect the other traps are failed partly open, as all the ones we've rebuilt or opened up so far have elements dated 1943

Lee_H

The surface temps between the radiators didn't appear to go below 88F, were they really that warm or was there not enough time for the readings to drop?

Gordo

@Lee_H: Surface temperature readings with low end FLIR devices should always be taken with a sizable grain of salt.
A lot of the surfaces in that space are varnished wood and therefore reflective, so as to directly reflect the heat signatures from the hot radiators.

That being said, it also was pretty darned hot in that space (no A/C) even before the radiators came on!