Main Vent Advice

fxrgrunt

Last year with much advice from you fine forum members I got my main vents set up. First picture with Gorton 2 and Hoffman 75 is on a 66ft 2 inch line. Second picture is 3 MoM 1s on a 47ft 2 inch line. 1/2 pipe used to make antlers. I got in a second Gorton 2 today with will go on 66ft line and I will add the Hoffman 75 to the 3 MoMs.

Now for the point. If you look at the pictures you will see the existing piping that I plugged into was bushed down from the T to what I believe is 1/4 inch which is what I hooked my antlers to. I imagine that the 1/4 pipe will actually be holding back the 2 Gortons max flow as well as the other lines max flow and I should probably remove those reducer bushings and put in a 3/4 or 1/2 bushing in there? Am I correct here? Thanks.

fxrgrunt

If the bushing gets removed, I probably will put a nipple, then a 45 with a few inch long pipe, then another 45 before doing the vents if that all makes sense. Once again, just curious on the 1/4 pipe choking the air flow for now?

JUGHNE

At one time, I did crunch the numbers for a G2. 1/4" ips would do only 1 G2 adequately.
IIRC, 3/4" will do 4 G2's.

But it is only 2" long, of 1/4"....very short bottle neck. But still will slow the venting down. IMO

fxrgrunt

JUGHNE said:

At one time, I did crunch the numbers for a G2. 1/4" ips would do only 1 G2 adequately.
IIRC, 3/4" will do 4 G2's.

But it is only 2" long, of 1/4"....very short bottle neck. But still will slow the venting down. IMO

Makes sense. I think after this upcoming heating season I will remove the bushings and maybe pipe it all to 3/4" to future proof it. I don't think I want to risk stripping or cracking anything right before heating season starts.

wlgann

I just did something like this to my own system a few weeks ago. Decades ago someone put a 1/4" bushing into the 1/2" outlet. I went to remove the bushing and it basically disintegrated, leaving most of itself fused into the outlet.

Luckily I am the proud owner of a 1/2" NPT tap. Unluckily the 1/2" outlet was too close to the ceiling to get a drill up there to drill out the remaining bits of the bushing. Luckily I am also the owner of a variety of large pipe wrenches and was able to disconnect the return from the boiler--I was hoping to give the fitting an eighth of a turn so I could fit the drill onto it. Unluckily, even with a good four feet of cheater pipe on my biggest wrench the original pipes weren't going anywhere.

I tried several other Majicks to clear the 1/2" outlet. I pinged at the bits of bushing with a cold chisel, hoping to chip it out of there. A keyhole hacksaw would not fit, but a small sharp file seemed to cut into the old iron--at risk of dropping the thing into my wet return.

The Wife Acceptance Factor was plummeting.

Luckily I realized I could put a jack under the wet return (that I hadn't been able to turn) and disconnect the main from the joist. Then I slowly lowered the jack until the main dropped enough (less than an inch!) to where I could drill out the remains of the bushing. THEN I could finally use the tap to clear the remaining junk out of the original 1/2" threads in the outlet.

Once I thought of lowering the main it was about a 30 minute job. It just required a whole other set of tools than I ever thought of when I started out.

Grallert

Hmm I don't see any 1/4" there. It looks to me that there is an existing 1x 1/2 bushing with a 1/2 nipple to a 1/2 x 3/4 coupling to a 3/4x1/2 bushing to a 1/2 close to 1/2 90 and so on. someone took the long way around but I don't see any restrictions.

fxrgrunt

@Grallert for sure took the long way for now because of the way the old vents were piped in. My plan is to get the bushing out after heating season and just running a 1 to 3/4" bushing out of the T and 3/4" pipe all the way across as to have no restrictions possible.