Wall of Shame

ScottSecor

This is my entry for today.

This is a roughly five year old Weil McLain LGB 6 gas fired steam boiler. Installation manual calls for a minimum of four inch riser (single), four inch header and two inch equalizer. They actually followed the book on this with regard to pipe sizing, although I am not certain the header is twenty-four inches above the water line.

If you notice the tee on the header just above the right side of the boiler, you might notice this is a 4" x 3" cast iron tee. This 3" pipe is supplying all the steam to the 2" steel supply and the two original 4" steam supplies. Not sure how we're going to get approximately 1600 square feet of steam to flow through this section of 3" pipe efficiently? The (new) building manager is concerned that the boiler may be grossly undersized. He mentioned the last contractor removed a bunch of radiators and capped off the mains so the rest of the building would heat better. He also mentioned the boiler rarely shuts off and many radiators never get warm...

The dead men likely sized the two four-inch steam mains so there is minimal pressure loss. These mains feed about twenty five or thirty two pipe radiators. I noted most if not all of the pipe insulation was removed and never replaced. I'm guessing the old boiler was piped much differently.

Looks like a simple no heat emergency service call just turned into a small consulting job and perhaps a decent sized project. We'll perform a standing radiator count first and determine if the boiler is adequately sized. Maybe a simple re-pipe or maybe a new boiler with re-pipe. Going to strongly suggest insulating all of the exposed steam mains as well.

Steamhead

I hope they still have the radiators that were removed- you'll need to count them as well, or find some other way to figure out what the pipes were sized for.

delcrossv

Steamhead said:

I hope they still have the radiators that were removed- you'll need to count them as well, or find some other way to figure out what the pipes were sized for.

@Steamhead Why would that make a difference? If the mains are now oversized for the radiation, how would that affect performance?

mattmia2

I mean the second step after figuring out how oversized the boiler is is removing the piping from the previous 3 boilers.

Steamhead

delcrossv said:

Steamhead said:

I hope they still have the radiators that were removed- you'll need to count them as well, or find some other way to figure out what the pipes were sized for.

@Steamhead Why would that make a difference? If the mains are now oversized for the radiation, how would that affect performance?

Pickup factor. Radiators were removed, but the piping to support them is still there. So there's more metal to heat up.