Piped totally wrong

Steve_210

But the customer says it works

Ironman

It’s wrong, but sometimes, steam can be forgiving.

KC_Jones

I’ve come to realize the term “works” is quite subjective.

pedmec

Then leave it alone. You can only get in trouble

Steamhead

KC_Jones said:

I’ve come to realize the term “works” is quite subjective.

This. You don't say what model it is, but it looks too big for 2" pipe.

ChrisJ

Sometimes "works" means nothing more than the building stays warm enough.

Steve_210

Sorry guys, egh 95 should have a 3 inch Header

dabrakeman

You don't know what you don't know.  When I moved into my first steam heated home 22 years ago I turned the heat down to 50 when I went to bed and back up to 68 when I got up.  Made a lot of funny noises but "it worked".  Yes the boiler was 40% oversized and I thought the steam coming from the vents was just a neat way to humidify the air.

pedmec

@ChrisJ i was thinking the same thing. isn't it supposed to bang? lol

Steve_210

It works no serious water hammer to talk of at least not that I heard.
Probably very inefficient as Steam is fighting to get into the mains
Two. Main things.
1 homeowners really don’t seem to know the difference
2 , the guy was able to do it a lot cheaper than do it the right way

ChrisJ

Steve_210 said:

It works no serious water hammer to talk of at least not that I heard.
Probably very inefficient as Steam is fighting to get into the mains
Two. Main things.
1 homeowners really don’t seem to know the difference
2 , the guy was able to do it a lot cheaper than do it the right way

This is something I've wondered about for many years now.

If an improperly piped boiler is inefficient.
Where is all of that extra "wasted energy" going? The block and piping can't be dissipating more because they aren't hotter, at least not any significant amount? So where's it going? When someone talks about these I always imagine a 5-10% drop, that's a lot of energy to get rid of especially on an EGH-95.

@Jamie Hall ?

ethicalpaul

The steam isn’t fighting anything in this header if water isn’t getting carried into the header.

like Chris implied, even then, all the energy is going into the house anyway.

when my old boiler would surge, it was like a loop of hot water going into the main and back down the return.

but all that water was 212F and steam was released and made it to the radiators