DIY Boiler Installation -- Peerless 63-03

mattmich

Learned Friends:

This is something like Version 2 of @ethicalpaul 's thread [https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/180795/diy-steam-boiler-install], but of course there will be differences related to my circumstances.

His thread, and others here, have helped me a lot. I think it's worth it to document what I'm doing for the next poor soul who can't find a contractor in their area. This will be wordy, and I won't apologize for it. Reading is fast, and details are important.

For the sordid history preceding these shenanigans, the gentle reader is directed to https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/195682/older-weil-mclain-boiler-fire-box-corrosion.

Ordering a boiler is not like ordering crayons from Amazon. Just because someone tells you "we have sixty of them in stock -- how many do you need?" does not mean they do. It might mean that they have an agreement with the factory, which will ship the 500-lb units directly, and in the process they lose sight of what's going on for about a week. It is good to understand this, but I did not and wound up canceling my order after one week of no action and no explanation. Since we're now 30 days from the heating season, I was getting a little jittery. I went with another supplier, which actually had my boiler in their warehouse and was willing to take a picture of it. Shipping from Queens (I think) to East Lansing, MI vie Fedex Freight took four days, with the last part of the journey handled by a sub-unit, again losing tracking information. I was given a four-hour window to accept delivery, and the boiler arrived in the third hour. The truck had a liftgate, and the driver used his electric pallet jack to place the boiler into my garage exactly how I wanted it. A good experience.

Difficulty #1 is to get the boiler off the pallet. My solution, which cost me well over an hour, was to cut away pieces of the pallet, put a floor jack under the feet of the boiler, and successively replace pallet support with pieces of 2x4 and a low dolly. It was the opposite of elegant but it worked. Between the jack and a four-foot pinch bar, I had all the leverage I needed. I did all cuts by hand with a crosscut saw, because I was paranoid of causing something to collapse or move through vibration from a Sawzall. Above all, I didn't want any shock or force to the boiler sections that would compromise the integrity.

If I had to do it again, I would send the bottom pallet back with the driver and just use the cage the boiler came in. Below are a few pictures for illustration. To be continued…

-Matt

mattmich

Difficulty #2 was to get the weight up four steps into the kitchen. I made up my mind to lighten and simplify the load as much as possible, so I spent a couple of hours removing the jacket and all connections, carefully documenting the work. For the lift I rented a Powermate motorized stair climbing dolly. I cannot fully recommend this -- if you work alone, make sure you get the model that has TWO motors, allowing the load to be lifted and lowered independently of the wheels. I just barely managed to get the load into the kitchen -- aside from not being strong, at 185 lbs I simply did not have the weight to properly counterbalance the ~330 lbs of cast iron. There's a youtube video showing the advanced version, which would have made the job much easier. Note the piece of wood lifting the load up maybe three inches -- I think without that I would not have been able to do it.

Difficulty #3 was the trip down the basement stairs. For this I asked my daughter to help. At 25 years old and five-foot-and-a-quarter-inch, she wasn't going to provide a lot of muscle, but another pair of hands was good to have. I also instructed her to dial nine and one at the start, to speed up any emergency calls. I'll admit to being a little stressed about this.

With her watching and directing me, I attempted to lower the boiler down. One step was easy enough, but one has to lower the load TWO steps in order to be able to lower the wheels of the dolly afterwards. I could not safely balance the load with my body weight, and decided to use another technique -- slide the boiler down the stairs.

mattmich

[Boiler slip-and-slide cont'd Sat Aug 31st]

The first step in this endeavour was to lower the boiler onto its back, which was accomplished with a lot of leverage and a long 2x8 on the back side. The boiler was lowered onto an old dolly I built years ago with 2" wheels, which made maneuvering pretty easy. My kitchen floor is thick slate tile, and I was careful to place rosin paper and thin fiber board under the load. Nothing broke or cracked.

I used two twelve-foot long 2x10s, with pieces of 2x4 between them, to build the slide. The boards were braced at the foot of the stairs to the opposite wall to keep them from sliding.

There was enough stair left on either side to be able to walk up and down to aid the load. Straps were looped through the feet of the boiler and provided a place to loop a rope through, with one end stationary. This provided 2:1 leverage and quite a bit of friction to make the job manageable. In the end, the kid did all the lowering, with me guiding the boiler down the stairs. That turned out to be the easiest part of the job.

One important point: I had to shorten the strap loops, since at the point of tilting, the ropes were about to disappear under the boiler, which could have complicated things. See pictures for details.

With the boiler on its back, I put 3" hard rubber casters on its feet. This turned out to be a great idea -- once we had righted the unit, it was easy to push it around like a shopping cart, and it allows fine-tuning the position to match up to the main.

First, some pictures. Here's the view from the half bath opposite the basement door. It's not everyday you sit on the throne trying to control a 350-lb load…

The moment of truth — just before 'tippage.'
Note that the straps around the boiler have been shortened.

..and we're on our way. No pictures were taken "during" the slide process… we had our hands full. As it turned out, the boiler hardly needed any force to keep it from sliding — it was nearly neutral and sometimes had to be nudged to move another inch. The transition off the dolly was the most critical and nerve-wracking time. Overall, I would do it again like this, and probably just build a ramp for the trip from the driveway to the kitchen.

Success!

Now it was easy to get the boiler into position. You can juuust see the edge of the main in the top left corner of the picture.

And of course I couldn't resist a quick test fit. With both risers open, I have to "plug" them somehow anyway, so I'll extend the factory piping with a second riser.

I took today off for some rest and some cooking. Tomorrow will be a long day.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me get this far, and fingers crossed this will be a smooth finish. My goal is to have a hot radiator somewhere in the house by the end of next weekend.

-Matt

Jamie Hall

I admire you, @mattmich ! You had the wit to figure out your way through a number of rather gnarly problems! Congratulations and nice job!

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1809220#Comment_1809220

I'm surprised what his feet look like.

HVACNUT

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1809221#Comment_1809221

I was wondering if they were OSHA approved sandals. Steel tip nail polish?

mattmich

» Steel tip nail polish?

Funny.

I take my helpers where I can find them, and young ladies wearing sandals are not allowed close to the action. But I could not have done it without her, that's for sure.

Question: Is it worth trying to degrease the steel piping as I attach it to the boiler? My old system is surely free of oils after many years, but ofc all the pipe I'm buying is coated. Do I try to do something about it, or do I resign myself to skimming a few times?

FWIW, I think there are a lot of standards and rules-of-thumb in this business that have to do with a contractor having to get the job right the first time. As a homeowner, I have the advantage of being able to adjust parameters over time. I'm kind of excited about this job.

-Matt

ChrisJ

I didn't wash any of my piping out.

If I had it to do over id probably try.

CLamb

When I installed my boiler I had planned on using a stair-climbing hand truck but my friend who was to help me chickened out so I hired a local rigger. The boiler was dropped off at his yard. He brought it over to my place and using a forklift and a very long boom he stuck it though my front door straight to the top of the basement stairway. He then slid it down the stairs on planks, just like you did, but first he reinforced the stairway with 4"x4"s.

EdTheHeaterMan

If you were truly going to emulate @ethicalpaul, there would be some overkill and perhaps a drop header. since you have lots of head room. the Drop Header is not really necessary, but the overkill might look like this:

But that would be overkill for sure…. Your pipe sizes selections look correct by the manual, by the way.

Looking foreword the rest of the story.

mattmich

Quick update — today was a looong day and I'm headed to bed.
Short version, there's been a lot of progress.
Longer version, lots of details to be sorted.

The most vexing one would be this — what on earth is the piece marked with orange? I cannot find it, no idea what I did with it, and I have even less of an idea what it's for. Are these available for sale? Surely a Peerless-specific item. I didn't throw it out, so it's probably somewhere in the mess in the garage, but that sort of thing drives me bonkers.

Other than that, things are going int he right direction. The risers are installed up to the unions. I made them one notch shy of 'farmer tight' so I'm confident they won't leak. And Paul was right, the wiring was easy, and the jacket is back on. More later this week; tomorrow I'll get back to my day job.

STEAM DOCTOR

The draft Hood slides over that metal part. That's called a flu collector. Don't seem to see anything missing there at all

ethicalpaul

I think it's not missing in that photo because he hadn't removed it yet 😅

You'll find it…I temporarily lost my flue-reducer that Peerless shipped with my 63-03L

Congratulations, the hard part is over, the rest is a piece of cake!!

I think in the other thread you said you were going to forego putting it on 4" concrete blocks, as is typical, due to wanting to maximize distance from the boiling water to the main, but you have more than enough distance. Your boiler won't even throw a drop of water up to your union's height…I would put the blocks (actually I might leave the wheels in place if it were mine, but they might make it more difficult to get the pipes tight enough)

I didn't de-oil my pipes because I figured there was plenty of gunk inside the boiler that skimming would be necessary anyway. But today I'm not sure of that…the inside of the boiler seems to be rusty from the factory so I don't know if there are oils shipped with it any more.

If you want to de-oil them, dishwashing liquid should work fine. Personally I liked the skimming process. Look at my skimming attachment, it's been extremely useful to me to leave it attached and to have it on an elbow so that I can change the angle of it.

PSA for future readers: If you install a tri-clamp sight glass, you don't have to buy the union because the sight-glass is basically a union itself, offsetting the cost.

KC_Jones

Commenting so I can follow your progress. It will be so satisfying when you turn it on for the first time. You're off to a great start!

mattmich

Thanks to everyone who commented.

I was pretty stressed about the whole thing, esp getting the boiler into the basement. I believe™ that has been OK; I have yet to do a pressure test of the boiler as it sits. I thought I'd have to send away for more parts to do that — largest diameter piping I can get locally is 2 inches — but Peerless, bless their little hearts, sent plugs for unused riser AND the unused condensate return. Found them last night, they were in the damper box.

I hope to check pressure tonight, plus make a run to Home Depot for some gas piping and a new valve.

@EdTheHeaterMan wrote:

» If you were truly going to emulate @ethicalpaul, there would be some overkill and perhaps a drop header.

You're not wrong, and if it were June, I'd probably do something like a sight glass on the way up to the main. But it's September, and when the inspector shows up, I'll be saying "I got the piping kit from the manufacturer but piped in the second riser" and leave it at that. I'm not trying to have a cool experiment in the basement, but heat upstairs this fall.

Physics is strict. Whatever works in Paul's basement works in mine just the same. With two risers, the steam will definitely be dry and the rest of the piping won't make much difference.

If I didn't have the kit as shown in house already, I would have piped it like you suggested. Nice job on the graphics, BTW, how did you do the fake 2-1/2" union? Looking closely, I think I can kinda see how you cut & pasted & stretched. Cute.

My goal is a heated radiator somewhere in the house before the end of next weekend. I can do that before I finish the water piping, so I'm leaving that for last.

The consensus is that the procedure for filling is to put in 9.3 gallons of tap water and not worry about it.. right? Maybe add Rectorseal soon after? I'd kinda like to do a steam run with just water to see what the condensate looks like.

Wach This Space.

-Matt

AdmiralYoda

@mattmich and @ethicalpaul thank you both for undertaking and documenting this. I have a 1980 50%-ish oversized Peerless and the 63-03L will be its replacement when the time comes. This will be helpful in helping me wrap my brain around it.

EdTheHeaterMan

That part is used to reduce the rate of travel of the flue gas thru the heat absorbing portion of the boiler's heat exchanger. Reducing the flow rate allows more time for the flue gas temperature to be absorbed by the boiler water. If you don't find it you can try ordering a replacement from Peerless. If that is going to take too long, I would just fabricate one from a piece of galvanized vent connector pipe. 24 Gauge minimum thickness. The insulation on the inside of that part may not be necessary if you decide to fabricate one yourself.

Without it your boiler may not use the fuel as efficiently and you will experience higher fuel usage then necessary. Its on page 50 of the manual I looked at. See Table 12.2

ethicalpaul

The consensus is that the procedure for filling is to put in 9.3 gallons of tap water and not worry about it.. right? Maybe add Rectorseal soon after? I'd kinda like to do a steam run with just water to see what the condensate looks like.

I wouldn't bother with any additive until it's been skimmed a couple times and is running well for a month or two. There's no hurry, it's not going to rot out from being at 7ph for a few months or even years.

It's the continuous introduction of fresh water over time that you want to avoid.

If you want to be really careful, fill it with either water that's been heated to the point where the excess oxygen is driven out, or distilled water.

EdTheHeaterMan

@ethicalpaul said: If you want to be really careful, fill it with either water that's been heated to the point where the excess oxygen is driven out, or distilled water.

easiest way to do that is to set your water heater temperature to MAX then use that water to fill the boiler the first time. (don't forget to place the thermostat back to your normal temperature after you finish that procedure.). You don't need to make the permanent fill connection from the hot water heater.

I have installed automatic water feed valves that record how many gallons get added to the boiler. It was very helpful on one particular job. It helped me determine that a wet return that was buried in a craw space was leaking. After replacing that return, the water added over the rest of the year was less than 5 gallons.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.supplyhouse.com/product_files/Hydrolevel-45-026-Product-Overview.pdf

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.supplyhouse.com/product_files/Hydrolevel-45-026-Product-Overview.pdf

mattmia2

You will have to skim it some even if you wash off the parts, there will be dope that was used at the factory and dope you used in the field that will melt off and need skimming. It is likely some of the oil wont' come out of the pores of the black iron until it gets heated with steam as well. You could reduce it but not eliminate it. The question is which is the better use of your time. I suppose an experiment for a pro might be to get like a used portable hobart made kitchenaid dishwasher and wash everything in that while you're fitting the boiler.

EdTheHeaterMan

@mattmia2 like we have time for experimenting on a job.

But @ethicalpaul could remove all the near boiler piping and make a video of replacing all those fittings with new fittings that are not pre-cleaned. In order to make it a true test, perhaps he can even put a new boiler in with all the original factory installed, contaminants.

Then next month do the same thing with all the parts washed in that dishwasher you are providing for the test.

That would be a great video.

mattmia2

It could be worth it if you only have to come back to skim once.

You will fill it to the water line on the sight glass. Some water will go in to the return piping so it will be more than just the content of the boiler.

It has been alluded to but not stated explicitly, the most important thing to the life of the boiler is to make sure the system isn't leaking, that all the vents are sealing, none of the valves are leaking steam, none of the piping or the returns are leaking.

ethicalpaul

It could be worth it if you only have to come back to skim once.

he lives there, so it’s a short travel time 😅

Ed, I already made a video where I put cutting oil in my boiler. It surges!

mattmich

Trying to keep up here…

I do plan to wash my piping out; can't hurt. I also plan to skim until I see an improvement.

Thanks to @EdTheHeaterMan for the vent reducer part number. I hope it won't come to that but I will buy one if I have to.

And thanks to everyone else; these comments help me think through stuff. Not getting involved in the washing machine discussion. I bought too much rubbing alcohol recently, so I'll discreetly use that to degrease my pipes…

For extra credit, anyone know how to fool a CycleGard for a few seconds so I can test out the burners? I can probably do it with the manual controls of the heater valve, too, but it would be swell to know that everything works. And I'm not quite ready to fill with water yet.

A Home Depot run got me the stuff I need to connect the gas.

A Supplyhouse order just went out, too. Lots of little pieces. My respect for the people who do this for a living keeps increasing. At least the commute to my work site is manageable. Gonna take Friday off and have a long weekend again.

Oh, and regarding the potential for leaks — I did a leakdown test today with a bicycle inner tube and my air compressor for convenience. I learned that even a 1" fitting needs to have tape and/or sealer in it to be tight. I also learned that soap bubbles will reliably show up a tiny leak. Tiny as in still pressure left after 40 minutes of sitting. I'm optimistic.

-Matt

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1809366#Comment_1809366

What size wrench are you using on what size pipes?

mattmia2

Any npt pipe thread connection needs tape or dope to seal (at least in standard applications, people will point out the fringe cases if i don't say this). there are threads with hundreds of comments you can read if you want to know why.

mattmich

» What size wrench are you using on what size pipes?

Three-foot pipe wrench on the big bushings and the 2" pipes that I REALLY want to stay put, like the risers. But that's limited by not wanting to break anything, by my puny strength, and by using the boiler itself as the counter-lever. None of those leaked air.

An 18" pipe wrench on most everything else, and a slightly smaller one on the 1" and 3/4" sizes. Mostly I leave them near the settings I use most.

I put two layers of tape over dope on male threads, plus dope on the end of the female ones for 1-1/4 and larger; Some of the factory fittings were put in with plenty of pipe dope by Peerless; I reused that for the low-water cut-off, since it's not supposed to be taped — I almost didn't remember that. Rectorseal Tru-blu everywhere else.

I plugged one hole dry with a 3/4" nipple and cap, just to see what would happen. And what happened was that it made bubbles. Good to know.

What I really learned is that there are no major leaks on the boiler itself. Heaven forfend. I'll try to hook up gas tonight after work and make sure the burners work as they should. I won't be able to plug all the wet return openings until Friday when a shipment gets here — locally I have only found pipe and fittings up to two inches, and it's predictably all import stuff. I'm sticking with US made where available when I mail-order.

ratio

I wouldn't light it off until the piping is complete & there's water in it.

ChrisJ

When tightening NPT fittings you'll notice the pipe gets tighter and tighter fairly linear. At one point, it's going to bind up and get really tight fast. That's the point you want to get to.

Matt mentioned the dope / tape comment because we've recently had multiple discussions on here about whether or not thread sealer is needed with NPT connections. I recently made up a bunch of joints without any dope or tape and none of them leak.

Personally I wouldn't put anything on the female threads as most will just get pushed into the fitting and get washed out. Questionable fittings I'd do a few wraps of tape pulled tight and pushed in with your finger / fingernail followed by a coating of dope over that.

GW

(Not sure how my voice to text gets so backwards)

doesn’t that power mate go down the stairs?

Getting the boiler off the pallet: You simply bearhug the block, tilt it up in the air, then waddle the block down to the ground.

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1809573#Comment_1809573

I think we just refrigerator walked mine off.

GW

Yes that’s the move!

mattmich

Progress!

A warning up front: a lot of what I did involves bypassing safety features, which is great for understanding, and potentially disastrous in an operational situation. How far to push things is something everyone has to decide for themselves.

I took a vacation day today and made some much-needed progress. The forecast for tonight is 42 degrees, which provides motivation.

I'm still collecting information and working to understand how this boiler actually functions, with the goal of finding problems as early as I can, so I can order parts etc. There's some chicken-and-egg stuff going on, like without water in the boiler, the low-water cut-off (LWCO) just stops things cold, preventing even the vent damper from moving, or the transformer from kicking in.

Using the miracle of amazon, I got myself a logarithmic set of resistors and found the magic number that made the LWCO think we had water. The sweetest sound was the vent damper closing (closing!!) as the power came on with water in the boiler but no heat called for. This is the sort of thing you can only learn by playing with stuff; with power to the LWCO but no water, the damper simply stayed open, which doesn't make sense to me.

I had had an offline interchange with @ethicalpaul about initiating a call-for-heat, which is simply affected by a jumper between the Y and R terminals on the transformer. Without assurance from someone who's done it, I really can't bring myself to jumper 24 V to what is effectively ground, but when I did that and plugged the power back in, I heard another sweet sound: The Piezo for the pilot was kicking in. Since there was no gas connected, this did not get too exciting, but made me think I was headed in the right direction.

So I jerry-rigged gas to the burners using a corrugated line from an old gas stove, which I hooked to a code-compatible valve I'd plumbed in this morning. And when I did: success! For about 7 seconds anyway, because dry firing a cast-iron boiler is not a great idea, so I shut it down immediately. But now I know that all the pieces are working.

Yes, I'm still on wheels. Fastest boiler in the West. I got paving stones at Menard's today and hope to sit on those by tomorrow night. It's a chicken-and-egg thing to get everything lined up properly.

It's incredible how much time it takes to properly tighten all those joints. I've got most but not all the them done, and I haven't even started on the condensate return.

The second riser needs (I believe) a seven-inch nipple at the header, but alas! Menard's does not sell those, and nobody else does either in my neck of the woods. So another Supplyhouse order will be made by Monday morning. Meanwhile I hope to fill and fire up the boiler tomorrow and make some steam with just one riser. The first step is to properly tighten up the wet return so it's water tight.

This business of having to line up things properly implies that for some joints, "needs tightening a little" means "another 360 degrees." I tightened things pretty well and can only hope it holds. Some joints will take stronger arms than mine to go another full turn. All through this job, my respect for the professionals keeps increasing.

Here's the unhygienic side: Both the electrical and the gas are hooked up in a way that means I don't leave the room when the power is on. On the other hand, this has been instrumental in understanding the system. I feel closer to my goal of a hot radiator somewhere in the house by Sunday night — after hooking up the vent, of course.

-Matt

mattmia2

You could have just jumpered the safety switch on the cycleguard, no need to make it think there is water in the boiler.

ethicalpaul

you can get some 1/4 brass fittings including perhaps a union to make the Pressuretrol be a lot easier to remove.

The way it comes from the factory it’s hard to remove once everything is on there and you want to make the pigtail be accessible for periodic cleaning. It gets gunked up and prevents the pressuretrol from feeling the pressure in the boiler.

Just one more of the little things

mattmich

» 1/4 brass fittings including perhaps a union to make the Pressuretrol be a lot easier to remove.

Paul, I saw the antlers you put on your boiler for all the controls and extra ports. I generally approve but decided to put the Pressuretrol back in just the way the factory did it, in case the inspector got hinky.
I'll figure out what I really want and go after it next spring when i do maintenance.

I'm deep in the data collection phase here. One reason for doing it myself was to be able to go through the system step by step. To that end, I turned my main from a parallel-flow into a 'later-flow' by capping both the boiler end and the wet return. This is irregular of course but as I've been belaboring: I need to learn, and I'd rather run a couple tests today and do the rest of the plumbing next week after the parts come in.

And learn I did. I finished the first step of the piping. Since I didn't have the connecting nipple for the second riser — it's a seven-inch length, unavailable locally — I just capped it. Then I filled the boiler with tap water. This puppy has got some power! Fifteen minutes from light-off to boiling, and that was from cold water. Impressive. The fill is 9.3 gallons.

The water level in the glass bounced down and mostly back up fairly regularly, maybe one or 1-1/4 inches peak-to-peak. Is that normal? I'm picturing a good rolling boil in the steam chest, but I've heard about 'surging', so I thought I'd mention it. Once the steam rose, it quickly went up the pipes with no indication of pressure anywhere. Of course, as soon as steam gets somewhere cold or merely warm, it collapses to water and causes a partial vacuum, calling for more. Until everything is hot, pressure can't build, and without a proper return, I wasn't going to let it go that long. After a few minutes, I cut the power.

None of my radiators downstairs showed any signs of heat, which was disappointing. I found the riser to the living room radiator — it's first in line off the main — and it was hot to the touch, but the radiator was cold.
Making the rounds of all radiators, I found that only the upstair bathroom, which I want hot first on winter mornings, had started to heat up. I'd repainted that one eons ago and adusted the vent for maximum flow, apparently. It's been quick to get hot ever since.

So that was a win — having a hot radiator somewhere in the house had been the goal for this weekend.
I decided to do another test and set up my cell phone to take video of the boiler, esp the water line. See below. Through a zoom session, I could watch it from the kitchen, from where I could cut electrical power immediately in case of trouble. This time I went to radiator #1 in the living room and unscrewed the vent. Cool air flowed out of the hole until I plugged it a again a minute later. At that point, steam had reached the inlet, and the magic unfolded without needing further assistance: the radiator got nice and hot.
I need new radiator vents, preferably the adjustable type. Any suggestions?

The rest of the weekend I will be cleaning up, and planning the return piping, for an order to go out Monday morning. Meanwhile I'll go after properly sized venting, maybe find my flue collector, and think about korrekt gas and water piping, plus resurrecting my old thermostat. Lots to do, but most of it doable by amateurs.

I'm happy so far.

The picture below shows how much the water level dropped from where it started — the arrow on the right shows the starting point for the waterline.

Thanks again to all who've chimed in. This forum is a fantastic resource.
Now I'll go in the basement and drain the wet return into a bucket. It's a kind of skimming I reckon :)

cheers -m

ChrisJ

No

You cannot skim from the wet return. I promise.

You're trying to wash oil off with water so you need to get it from the top of everything. It'll just stick to the boiler walls otherwise.

mattmia2

I'd use fittings with plugs to make a trap for the pressuretrol so you can flush it without disassembling it. i would also add a low pressure gauge and possibly a vaporstat. I'd start with the low pressure gauge and see if it ever builds pressure for the vaporstat to limit in the first place. This can all wait until you have heat or even until you do the maintenance next year. Can always cut the pigtail to get it apart to swap with fittings.

ChrisJ

If the system gets balanced and vented well and the boiler is sized fairly well there shouldn't be any need for a Vaporstat.

ethicalpaul

More advice that some others might not agree with 😅

Don't get adjustable vents, they are problematic and annoying. But the Jacobus Maid O Mist vents have swappable orifices and are easy to use for balancing.

Use #4 for most radiators. If a radiator is farther away from the main and/or in a room that is colder, try a #5 or #6.

If a radiator still won't get hot with a #6, it might have a pitch problem in its supply pipe where water is being trapped, preventing steam from reaching the radiator.

https://www.supplyhouse.com/sh/control/search/~SEARCH_STRING=jacobus%20angle%20air%20valve

EdTheHeaterMan