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Water hammer, no heat, puking rad on one line
Steam nube armed w/ D.H.'s books... 1856 home, newer steam boiler (2010) heats great except for 3 rads at end of house. Water hammer in this line, takes forever to eventually get these rads to heat... rest of the house gets way hot by then. What I've done: Discovered zero main vents, added Gorton #1 toward end of troubled line where I found a plug. There are 2 other plugs, one near the end of another line where it turns upward through the floor and one in the piping near the boiler. Replaced 10 of 11 rad vents with Gortons sized to slow flow near the t-stat and to speed flow on troubled rads. Added insulation to some bare fittings in the basement, adjusted the pitch and straightened the (sagging?) troubled line as best I could. Removed & cleaned pigtail, drained some water at bottom of Hartford loop. Just had boiler cleaned & serviced. Pressuretrol set @ about 1/2 psi and diff looks to be set @ 1psi.
Had Gorton 6 on likely the most troubled rad and it puked about a quart of water on its way to heating up. Replaced with a good (I think) Doyle vent, adjusted to 10, to stop the puking. I pitched this rad (was dead level) by raising about 1/2 inch on far end but didn't help.
We cannot leave system on overnight cause it wakes everyone up.
TY in advance for any guidance. (I do have some nice steam porn from this house that I'd love to share along with pics of system but how do I add pics???)
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Comments
Is that line served by a drip to a wet return? If so, check that that isn't plugged.
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England.
Hoffman Equipped System (all original except boiler), Weil-Mclain 580, 2.75 gph Carlin, Vapourstat 0.5 -- 6.0 ounces per square inch
"Reducing our country's energy consumption, one system at a time"
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Baltimore, MD (USA) and consulting anywhere.
https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/all-steamed-up-inc
HeatingHelp.com
Maybe I need guidance on how much I can moved these pipes around before I crack something. There is not a lot of space available to claim in some places. I'm trying to make small incremental changes.
Still can't believe there were no main vents. All the rads had Doyles. If it makes a difference, only one of the steam risers off the boiler is being used.
Are the pipes insulated? Uninsulated pipes make a lot of condensate quickly, which must be allowed to drain back.If the pipes are naked, naked, you can put a magnetic level on the pipes every 10 feet or so and mark the direction of flow with an arrow on tape. You may find some arrows pointing towards each other.
Verify your pressure with a low pressure gauge, graduated in ounces. You can also see the back-pressure of venting with the gauge, which should be less than 2 ounces—NBC
You have a lot of info in this thread already. I would try to narrow things down or you will get inundated with so many suggestions.
First focus on all your main venting. Make sure that during the start of a heat cycle, you can follow the steam through each main all the way to the vent (using careful touch--you'll know when the steam gets there).
This will ensure your mains are all operational. You might also get a chance to hear exactly where the hammer is occurring during these observations.
OK for the insulation, that's fine. Don't tear it off. The Gorton #1might be making the steam favor the other mains, so they fill up before this one. But then once they are full, this one should fill up before ANY radiator in your system does.
To test it more, you can just remove the Gorton #1 and watch the hole during start of call for heat. If an open 3/4" hole doesn't let that main get steam first, then nothing will (vent wise)--in that case there must be something else going on, like a lot of water in that main in a sag somewhere that is "eating" the steam.
Post pictures of your near-boiler piping (several photos, each far enough away that we can see floor to ceiling, from several angles) and people here can tell you if it's likely that water is getting thrown up into your mains.
Watch my video on this thread to see what can happen: https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/169320/see-wet-steam-in-the-wild
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England.
Hoffman Equipped System (all original except boiler), Weil-Mclain 580, 2.75 gph Carlin, Vapourstat 0.5 -- 6.0 ounces per square inch
With a 2 to 4' level as desired, get 2 sharp roofing nails, both exactly 2" long, these have big heads.
Tape thru the nails to fasten them to the bottom of each end of the level.
Several wraps of tape for a secure fit.
You can test the accuracy of your new nail point level by setting it on a level (nearly) bench. Then turn it end for end and you should get the same bubble reading, if so then your tool is correct. FWIW
Tried the "remove Gorton #1 idea" with no different results.
All other radiators were getting heat first, no steam to back of house.
Water hammer started early in pipe section in pic. Pipe was shaking for first minute then calmed down to less voilent hammer. My dilema is I cant move the pipe downward on the left side or lift up the right side because it will alter (raise) the slope of the long run this 6' section serves.
After 40 minutes the room (w/ t-stat) had raised 6 degrees and still no heat to problem rad BUT there was a lot a water sloshing noise in the pipe under the floor and quite a bit of water seeped out of the aforementioned stressed connection at this rad. Its like the water gets pushed up this run.
Anyway, looks like no easy button for this one. I'll carefully check the pitch of the long run leading to the pipe in the pic and see if there will be enough travel to raise that right corner to maintain that pitch and follw that pitch through the wall into the boiler per Jamie Hall.
Second pic likely shows were wet return occurs-- that kinked pipe is connected at the very back of the header.
In addition to the water hammer, I can't see any way you can balance the steam flow with the current pipe configuration. Steam will take the path of least resistance, meaning larger pipes, larger or more radiators on those pipes, larger vents will make steam favor those first and others will only get steam as the favored pipes/radiators are full and become more difficult for additional steam to get into them. By that time, the room with the thermostat will either be satisfied and the boiler will shut down or some of the other rooms will be too hot.
The correct way to pipe a boiler is to run one, two, maybe three (large house) Mains off of the Header and then each radiator is piped off of the Mains.
If piped as a parallel flow system, the mains are highest at the header and pitch downward as it travels along its path. Radiator run-out then pitch back towards the main that feeds the radiator. At the end of the main, there is a drop into a wet return so that condensate can get back to the boiler or the main continues, after the last radiator and turns back towards the boiler, pitching downward all the way an then drops into a wet return near the boiler.
On a Counter flow system, the mains are lowest at the boiler and rise along its path. The Radiator run-outs still pitch back into the main but condensate runs counter to the steam, in the pipe, back to the boiler but there is a Drip, for each main, just before the header, that drops to a wet return. That allows condensate to run down the drip rather than back into the header where hammer can occur.
Just to clarify though—the remove the main vent thing is just to see if steam is getting to the end of the main. You can’t run like that—steam will never go to the radiator if there’s not a vent on that fitting. It will just go into your basement
I promised some steam porn earlier. I will post in new thread.
"Reducing our country's energy consumption, one system at a time"
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating Specialists
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Baltimore, MD (USA) and consulting anywhere.
https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/all-steamed-up-inc
1983(?) Peerless G-561-W-S | 3" drop header, CG400-1090, VXT-24
What size are your other mains? You want to make sure they are also vented well.
You also mentioned that you installed new Gorton vents on the radiators, what sizes dd you use? Hopefully nothing larger than a 5. If you vent your mains properly anything larger than a 5 will rob steam as it will act as a mini main vent.
The down stairs uses 2 4's near the Tstat and the rest are 5's.
I may need to re-size if a bigger main vent on the problem line appears to be in order. I have not timed the movement of heat up the pipe with this vent removed, per ethicalpaul, yet.
What size pipes and lengths do you have on the other mains. That will allow us to give you a recommendation for the other main vents you will need. It's not a science but a good starting point.
The other plug is located near the boiler in that tangle of pipes where another run starts (?).
Its possible there are other plugs stuck at the end of the other runs but they would likely be buried in spray foam where the foundation was replaced the rim joist got insulated.
For now, the other runs are sending steam to the other rads but the other rads will vent loudly if I'm trying to raise the house temp more than 6 degrees or so.
I can see from some fuel oil delivery history that the previous owner was going thru a lot of oil just to maintain heat while they were in FL for the winter.
No budget for reworking my steam pipes but would be happy if proper venting where access is available and balancing the rads from there would bring a little more efficiency. We do have a pellet stove for the main living area and a small wood stove in the kitchen in back.
Get creative!
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England.
Hoffman Equipped System (all original except boiler), Weil-Mclain 580, 2.75 gph Carlin, Vapourstat 0.5 -- 6.0 ounces per square inch
Your comment does make me wonder if it is cost effective to use the programmable t-stat currently in place. ie we can have heat essentially idle (set real low) while we are away and it it will come back on like an hour before we arrive home. We can program all seven days with different cycles around sleeping and coming and going. OR, we can just leave it on all day at a reasonable temp like 67..
Will this be a more critical decision to make when our outside temps start falling to single digits?