Odd ball two pipe

GW

Looked at this small commercial building for something else— but the steam system caught my eye. Modern Boiler is piped for straight up one pipe and no F and T traps. Most rads are two pipe but I saw two that were one pipe. No traps at all. Super strange— anyone seen this? The pics are units in the basement, 1930s building


i can see the basement working with wet returns but main floor level is a stumper 

now I’m second-guessing myself, I did not pay attention to the upper level radiators, perhaps they dropped everything into the wet return like the real old days

mattmia2

The basement ones make sense because the steam has to come down from the main and the condensate can't go up. Are you sure about the upper floors being 2 pipe? It could be some 2 pipe air vent variation, if there is a vent on the radiator steam in the return matters less as long as it more or less gets to the vent from the main before it gets to the radiator from the return.

Steamhead

Well, that's one way to put steam rads into a basement, as long as you're above the "A" dimension. How about some pics of the ones on the main floors?

EBEBRATT-Ed

I have seen a couple of jobs like that. Two pipe rads where the dropped every return into a wet return with air vents on the rads. Kind of a modified two pipe air vent system. And the work good. No steam backing up the return pipe.

GW

This is an old town Hall, one main level, and the basement that’s it. I’m quite positive the radiators on the main level have valves on both ends. But a couple in the entryway were single pipe. I felt weird about grabbing lots of pictures, because that’s not the reason I was there. But the superintendent didn’t seem to mind that I was pulling out my camera.

I’m bugging at myself that I didn’t think to track the second pipe from the main level rads. They must drop into the water.

if I get the job, I’ll be sure to look again and grab more pictures