The Right Pressure for Steam Heating Systems

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The Right Pressure for Steam Heating Systems

In this excerpt from his Dead Men’s Steam School seminar, Dan Holohan shares his knowledge about pressuretrols and the optimum pressure for steam heating systems. He talks about the difference between sensible and latent heat and why a steam heating system will work at 2 psi if you only get the air out of its way.

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CarlM

The right handed screwdriver is cheaper

EdTheHeaterMan

I just mentioned this to someone on another site:

while reminiscing about his days as an apprentice, he remembers being asked to get a pipe stretcher from the work truck. Then I remarked that you could never ask that apprentice to get you one of these after pulling that trick on him.

Marc_18

My boiler is slightly oversized. All vents are sized correctly. For overnight setbacks greater than 4-5 degrees, the p’tol will hit the current setting of 1.5 oz and begin to cycle the boiler.

Question is whether to 1) leave things alone, 2) raise the p’tol setting a bit to, say, 2 oz, 3) manually raise the thermostat in stages in the morning to reach the desired house temp without pressures going above ~1.5 oz or 4) set the overnight house temperature to be higher (undesired)?

bburd

That's normal operation for the circumstances, I'd leave it alone.

Waher

Do not raise the pressure. The pressuretrol cycling the boiler at 1.5oz is doing its job keeping the system in the proper operating pressure range.