Sanity check on sizing a steam boiler for 3rd floor apartment?

KC_Jones

I think you’d be fine with the proposed EG-30.

I’d also suggest a conversation with the contractor about your options to add main venting.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@radsteam1870

Where the three elbows are take one out and install a tee with a main vent. Pipe the vent up high as close to the subfloor as possible

Charlie from wmass

There are many ways to improve the venting even with the parameters you have stated. 

ayetchvacker

Charlie from wmass said:

My father was a great plumber and he started the trade in 1953. He and I fought constantly until my late twenties about how to install steam boilers. My father had decades more experience than me and finally realized he had been doing it wrong and I was doing it better. There is no magic involved with steam heating. There is only physics. And the original post was about boiler size and whether or not their plumber was oversizing the boiler. Grossly oversized boilers provide heat and very few people complain when they have an oversized boiler as far as adequate he goes. What they don't realize is they are wasting fuel every day that boiler runs. Since they have nothing to compare it to they never know the difference. Advice to install a larger boiler due to the fairy tale of water content is a disservice to the consumer and is perpetuation of falsehoods that exist in our trade. I have spent the last 20 years of my career fixing the mistakes of people that should have known better but refused to accept the knowledge they were given often for free.

Well said sir

Chris_L

@radsteam1870 If you can post some pictures of your basement boiler piping and mains, I am sure you'll get a wealth of advice here on where main vents might be installed, and how the new boiler should be piped.

ostneb

Did anyone recommend New England Steamworks? The fact you’re going with the Weil McLain makes me think maybe you went with them, great choice. 

I live in Cambridge and can make some recommendations as well if you still need.