Anyone try using orifices instead of steam traps?

RayWohlfarth

I came across this article and wondered if anyone tried using orifices in the steam supply instead of traps. If so, how did it work? Thanks I am sort of intrigued by it

Mad Dog_2

In the past..very cool 😎. My buddy Bill Traube Licensed Master Plumber from Sea Cliff Long Island Gold Coast...showed me how to make them out of silver coins...that he would drill out.  Bill Got The Heck out of Dodge (Long Island 🏝)  with his wife and 5 Kids..Gotta be pushing 68ish...Moved to Fredrick Maryland.  Boy do I miss that guy...Great plumber, Heating man. He was a local Legend. Quite a few of the plumbing inspectors didn't like him because he often knew the code better than they did, did top notch work,, and would NEVER back down or relent..He once called out an inspector with his hand out in front of a whole construction site.
"I don't give Payola..I don't take payola...$@#&%. !!!'  

They tried to punish Bill by not showing up to inspections, not calling him back..Bill was a Big Boy  6 foot 2  260lbs.  He went down to the Building Dept, walked behind the Counter and denounced everyone very loudly, the place was packed with Homeowners, Contractors & Expediters...Ha ha 😂 🤣 😆 Awkward!!!

The Commisioner came out of his office, pulled Bill in his office &  had a private meeting with Bill, apologized and it never happened again.. He beat " City Hall!"  My man!  Bill was a fantastic Steam BEFORE 1992 Lost Art came out..AND he had a great test lab: "Sea Cliff is a Great Historic North Shore town with Old Victorians..Two-Pipe Vapor systems.

 Mad Dog 

JUGHNE

I came across Henry's article some years ago.

I first used the orifices in a house that had most trap guts removed, went for 80% of EDR of CI rad.
Had good success with that.

Since then for several school buildings.

You just have to keep the pressure within a certain window.

I have since found a very expanded chart for pressure, EDR and sizing.

The Steam Whisperer

We use orifices in place of ( sometimes with) radiator traps on nearly all 2 pipe steam systems we do major work on. I have found that the typical 2 pipe steam system from between WWI and WW2 only needs about 60% of the installed radiator capacity. That drops even lower if there have been substantial thermal improvements, so we usually size the orifices for 60% at design pressure.

However, once the orifices are in, a whole world of possibilities is now available. The first is that you can now use a much smaller capacity boiler for two reasons. First is that you have essentially down sized (I call it virtual downsizing) the connected radiation the boiler "sees", so you can use a much lower EDR for boiler sizing. In addition, the pick up load drops substantially, so you can drop the size some more ( I think your attached article speaks about this).
How I usually work it is if the building needs traps, convert it if you can. If It needs a new boiler, the cost of the plates sizing and installation is usually about the same as the cost difference between the smaller orifice plate size boiler and the larger boiler needed to match standard EDR x 1.33 sizing.

The next step is really cool. You can install a modulating burner that runs on outdoor reset. In warm weather the boiler will run at a steady low fire and then as it gets colder the firing rate is increased. In turn, the boiler builds more pressure which forces more steam through the orifices to provide more heat. We set up our modulating orifice plate systems with direct outdoor temperature reset of the boiler firing rate. We found that even good controls cannot modulate well if using pressure transducers.
We do have an occasional system that needs the boiler to go to a higher rate at start up of a cold system in order to prime the steam system so steam will flow to all the radiators evenly.

None of this is new... Just research the Moline systems... they did all of this back around 1900.

It is also very interesting that by the 1930s, the big steam trap system companies were starting to use orifices in the supply valve because the the excellent system balancing it provided. If you read the literature that Dan H published, you will see references to using orifices in the sales literature starting in the 30's.

We've been doing orifices for about 15 years. We just did a manufacturing plant with about 25 overhead fan coil heaters spread out over 4 buildings. With 0 psi showing at the boiler gage we had heat at the farthest fan coils. It was very moderate temperature air blowing.. just what you want in moderate weather.

jumper

Yes and yes. After windows have been upgraded radiation is oversized so radiator condenses steam. Inlet orifice seems to throttle steam better than a normal valve does. Why I do not know.
When replacing trap mechanism with outlet orifice then the hole has to accommodate both condensate and air. How much air?
In the seventies commercial boilers were often replaced with multiple boilers and most of the time only 25% or 33% of capacity sufficed. I didn't hear about problems pushing air through system but I sometimes worried about it before falling asleep.

JUGHNE

The inlet orifices' would control better than the typical hand valve because it is of a fixed size. The only changing factor could be the steam pressure.

The hand valve can be adjusted but the temp changes seem to change the opening for the steam.....and also there are many hands to change the valve adjustment.

I was concerned about the air removal from steam mains and would try to put a fair amount of air venting at the end of steam mains ahead of any F&T's.

Between the orifice small opening and the seemingly restrictive air passage of F&T's, it seemed logical to increase the steam main venting.

RayWohlfarth

Thank you all. It seems like a cost effective idea