Savings ???? Repipe

ethicalpaul · January 30

So you're saying steam will heat up a pipe to hotter than 212 and yet it won't turn the water in that pipe to steam?

My claim is that when the system is at temperature, the steam isn't actually going to collapse. I'll make a video. I ruined this poor person's discussion. Good night!

delcrossv · January 30

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839098#Comment_1839098

So does a radiator heat to higher than 212? What happens there? Steam at 212 condenses to water at 212 and the rad gets hot. Maybe a degree or two difference?

ethicalpaul · January 30

I'm not sure what you're asking. In the case of a radiator, it is always going to be cooler…it is giving up its heat to the room. All the radiators provide a place for that heat to go. That is what I'm saying. When a boiler is making 200K BTU it is sending that heat via steam to the radiators regardless of how much water may or may not be in the steam (as I said way above, there isn't really any water in the steam…except if the boiler is puking its guts into the main. And even if it's doing that, 200K BTU of heat is going into the system and that is going to produce steam.)

mattmia2 · January 30

If there is any pressure above standard atmospheric pressure in the system the temp at which water will become steam is higher. That makes the temp of the boiler higher and reduces the energy that transfers to the vs goes up the vent.

RTW · January 31

Agreed!

BY ED post above: "It's like driving a car up against a tree and stepping on the gas . For those who saw the movie "Sideways" will relate to that analogy

Regards,

RTW

Laugh Out Loud: Jack Crashes Miles’ Saab

delcrossv · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839102#Comment_1839102

A pipe is just a long, skinny radiator.

LRCCBJ · January 31

@ethicalpaul

If what you claim is anything close to accurate (which I don't believe for one second), you'll have to agree that all the garbage NBP that we see on here doesn't matter. The boiler will provide wet steam and all that wet steam will transfer to heat in the occupied spaces.

The problem you have with that argument is that there are numerous examples of steam boilers that get repiped properly and cut their fuel consumption by 20%.

There are numerous boilers on here with drop headers that are installed for good reason and not for just good looks. The operate without any meaningful pressure.

So, Paul, where did the energy go?

About the only argument that I can possibly muster for you is that boilers with miserable NBP need to operate at higher pressures than a boiler with a drop header. The higher pressure translates into additional fuel consumed. You might be able to run with that.

ethicalpaul · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839105#Comment_1839105

Yes the temperature of steam will go up with the pressure, but not nearly enough to absorb all the output of a boiler. And you keep saying "goes up the vent" but I can't for the life of me understand what you mean there. I thought it was a typo the first time but apparently not 🙂

The problem you have with that argument is that there are numerous examples of steam boilers that get repiped properly and cut their fuel consumption by 20%.

I would truly like to see evidence of that because honestly I just can't understand where that 20% went before and no one here seems to want to tell me, but they sure like to tell me how wrong I am 😅

you'll have to agree that all the garbage NBP that we see on here doesn't matter.

Indeed it often doesn't. I'll talk about it in the video. Probably won't be until next week though.

Long Beach Ed · January 31

Let me try this one other way:

Wet steam is steam that contains more than 2% water. It is the latent heat in steam that heats the building. In wet steam, there is not enough latent heat to heat the radiators; not enough BTUs carried in the steam.

Someone we all know and respect in this field has said "Wet steam is garbage".

Don't throw out those 3-inch dies yet, Clammy.

ethicalpaul · January 31

Well regardless of if it's garbage, it doesn't exist the way I've seen it presented. Droplets of water fall out of it, they do not get carried any real distance, certainly not all the way to a radiator.

That's part of the confusion, people have different definitions of wet steam. There's "surging", where boiler water is thrown into the main. Is that wet steam?

There's little droplets that are supposedly (but I've never seen it) carried with the steam. Is that wet steam?

If steam does have some droplets in it, does that make the steam less able to heat? I don't see how. I'll repeat myself: where do the BTUs generated by the boiler go if they don't make it somehow to the radiators? No one will answer because there is no answer. The BTUs make it to the radiators.

GW · January 31

thanks all- didn’t think I’d create a small wind gust.

didn’t think I’d see a grammar crackdown either 😀 I always get tickled inside when I see grammar faux pas on national tv😀

“chimney gone” those are not her words. She has an interest in not using the chimney—-I didn’t ask why. I feel like I don’t need to talk her out of that desire.

Steam—dry vs wet: I didn’t think that was a debate but seems like it is. I’ll have to read the Lost Art again- darn it!

my latest national TV spelling boondoggle - (please don’t bust me in politics)

IMG_6949.jpeg

Jamie Hall · January 31

Oh my. Well, first, the steam we are dealing with is what is called saturated steam. What that means in practice is that the steam — the water vapour — is at the temperature at which it will condense at that absolute pressure. This has a number of consequences, some of which are a bit weird, but for the present conversation what it translates to is that anytime energy is removed from the steam, such as by coming into contact with a surface which is cooler — a pipe or a radiator! — it will condense into liquid water, and the released heat energy will be transferred to the whatever the steam was in contact with. The resulting liquid water will, in the contact case, by found on that surface and will collect and form identifiable liquid condensate. Not a problem. There are other ways that energy can be removed, causing condensation. The most common is at an expansion, which is very handy in a radiator: the steam expands as it enters the radiator and condenses into very hot liquid water (in fact, steam temperature) and that water collects on the radiator and you get a nice hot radiator. Expansion in other places may not be so good. In some cases, it can be effectively neglected, such as the expansion for a riser into a header or steam drum. In others it can really cause some odd problems, most notably if a reduced port valve is used — the steam will condense on the downstream side of the valve and that will reduce overall steam flow downstream and produce a good bit of condensate.

But in any of these cases, the water droplets are tiny — and at steam temperature — and are not a problem.

The other use of the comment "wet steam" is when actual large droplets of water are carried over for one reason or another from the boiler. These droplets are below steam temperature and will cause some of the steam itself to condense, bringing them up to steam temperature. This can amount to a fair bit of the steam you thought you had coming off the header, and if the carryover continues into the header, can reduce the amount of steam available for the radiation. It also means that there is more condensate present than there should be, and this can be a headache, particularly in counterflow piping.

In power uses, the steam is almost always superheated — that is, the actual temperature of the steam is above the boiling point at that pressure (sometimes well above) and condensation just doesn't happen, and the energy in the steam can be used by expansion in a turbine or piston engine (note that very early steam engines did extract the energy by condensation, not expansion — but that all gets very tedious…)

109A_5 · January 31

https://youtu.be/Si-FoRQVIpA

That seems like a long call. How well was the house heating. I see some of your missing BTUs, water does not move against gravity like that by its self.

https://youtu.be/m3yvBs-h-7k

EBEBRATT-Ed · January 31

@ethicalpaul said

"If steam does have some droplets in it, does that make the steam less able to heat? I don't see how. I'll repeat myself: where do the BTUs generated by the boiler go if they don't make it somehow to the radiators? No one will answer because there is no answer. The BTUs make it to the radiators."

Excessive water vapor, condensate, wet steam whatever you want to call it in the piping will reduce and condense some of the useable steam coming out of the boiler.

You can't see or measure the lost heat because it is latent heat every lb of usable steam that condenses loses 1000 btu/lb

By condensing the steam in the "wet" pipe you slow the production of steam traveling down the main as the boiler has to make more steam so it runs longer to satisfy the thermostat. The btus lost from the condensed steam in the pipe are heating the basement

Steam passing through a pipe with excessive condensate, wet steam etc is not going to reboil the condensate that is in the pipe.

If it could do that, we would never get water hammer due to sagging or incorrectly pitched pipe. If it could reboil the water we wouldn't have to care about pipe pitch the steam would reboil the water and you would get only steam at the far end.

Everyone that comes on this forum with a steam boiler that doesn't heat well there are two questions we always ask .

how is the near boiler piping? Post some pictures
2. If the boiler is surging or you have waterline issues , has the boiler been skimmed?

Those two thing are what cause wet steam and water hammer and sluggish heating

Long Beach Ed · January 31

Paul, it sounds like you are confusing condensate and wet (saturated) steam. If you see water flowing in a steam pipe, it's not wet steam. It's condensate. The water in wet steam is atomized, it's usually seen as a mist in escaping steam. Dry steam is invisible, until it begins to condense.

Reiterating what Ed and I have said, the BTUs that wet steam is incapable of holding and transferring out of the boiler are heating the boiler's iron directly and the basement, along with any other BTUs that exceed the steam's capacity to carry them.

Imagine a dry-firing boiler. The BTU's are making the boiler glow red, but there's not enough steam to transfer them out of the boiler to the radiators. The BTU's aren't lost but they aren't being transferred out of the boiler in any efficient manner. The building's not heating, the BTUs are escaping from the fuel but they aren't travelling in the steam. They're feeding a cherry red piece of iron and the air around it.

ChrisJ · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839185#Comment_1839185

Since it's the primary source of the arguing here, where are these large quantities of energy going when it comes to the concerns of "wet steam". If you have a 200,000 btu/h output boiler and the claims are 20% is being wasted, where is that 40,000 btu/h going to? It's not being beamed up by Mr Scott.

You would need 166 sqft of radiation to dissipate that.

Is this actually an issue of it being a system that runs in short bursts vs continuous? I.E. if it ran non-stop this issue would vanish, but since it's in short bursts the steam doesn't make it where it needs to go and that energy is just slowly dissipated by the boiler /piping during off cycles?

clammy · January 31

Not to bust anybody but im case everybody forgot ' How could 212 water turn into steam unless the additional 970 btu are there as the latent heat which the change of state from 212 water to 212 degree steam . Also lets not forget when it turns back to water -970 btu and a 1700 times less volume ie vacuum forming bang .This is not happening out in the system it's happening at the burner where heat is input . Unless physics has changed Einstein's theory you are not getting that latent heat which is energy input from a pipe which is exposed to surrounding ambient mere fantasy . Plain and simply impossibly we cannot understand paul logic being i can't see how a pipe weather insulated or uninsulated is going to have enough energy to apply another 970 btu of latent heat to change from water to steam unless you have a flame under it . Lets me not presume that everyone knows sensible from latent heat right? ps i am not as smart and bright as other may think if so i would be wealthy instead i'm poor and slightly stupid so please explain the pseudo science or better yet take a quick review of commercial steam and power plant generation before ya throw some bs thoughts out there because i know that steam in a power turbine is not adding steam to the turbine the turbine is using the steam as a prime mover and leaving condensate when its work is done ie turning into condensate . Most of all this stuff has been in use centuries so as smart as i think i am at times i surely know that i am not just observate and have seen all the things some say are not required but it amazes me as i think about the masses of job i ve seen that did not work and they usually had had everything done incorrectly and missing stuff . remember 212 water plus 970 btu = 212 steam without the 970 latent heat ya just got 212 water and ya aint getting that 970 btu from a pipe w no heat source unbless FM . Spin on

I post not to make anyone feel inferior or that i'm so smart i guarantee i'm not that smart it s the result of ions of mistakes n plenty of lumps and a constant life time of reading and also mostly working alone so ya get real good at smell sorting and removing nonsense and bull at least that's how i feel about it .

please remember ain't so smart and it's hard flying to the sun of wings of pastrami

peace and good luck clammy

ethicalpaul · January 31

you all are being very patient and I appreciate you allowing me to ask these questions and make my little points.

But I repeat: if a boiler is making steam with water droplets in it, and those droplets prevent steam and heat from efficiently reaching the radiators, where then is all that heat going?

The rest I feel have addressed earlier, but no one will answer this one. Thanks again!

clammy · January 31

Ed saw your post about the die lol it was gone a few month ago just didn't have the room for it and there s just to many low ballers for me to get out bed and waste the time or fuel there all just looking at price and hoping for a bargain . LOL Never happen always hacker available

peace and good luck clammy

Mad Dog_2 · January 31

Actually, I prefer to use "more betterer." Even though my fambly calls me "Grammar Man" & "OSHA man" I enjoy using misnomers, malaprops, mixed metaphors to annoy the uptight people...ha ha...Happy Friday....Mad Dog

Long Beach Ed · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839211#Comment_1839211

Paul, read my last post. The BTUs not put into saturated steam remain in the boiler and its adjacent piping. It returns to or never leaves the largest radiator in the system, which is the boiler. Water will rain down upon the water line and steam release from the surface will be retarded by it, as it is by a film of oil.

The BTUs will be added to the boiler water as latent heat. Won't be enough to change its state to steam, but it the hot water will absorb it.

ethicalpaul · January 31

Thanks, Ed, but a boiler and its piping can't radiate that much heat.

I also point out that the boiler is full of water, and somehow the steam is able to separate from it. The same is true of water in the header or even the main. If there is enough heat energy (and there is), the steam will be produced.

Steam bubbles travel through actual water from the bottom of the boiler and emerge from the top, and yet they are not collapsed into water. Because all the water is at steam temperature. Why wouldn't this also occur in the header? It does.

PhilKulkarni · January 31

I am enjoying this debate of wet vs dry steam and which is more efficient for heat transport. Dry steam by definition is water entirely converted to gas, carrying with it 100% of latent heat(of evaporation), whereas wet steam is less than fully saturated and consists of steam mixed with liquid water sans the latent heat . Dry steam will transport more heat per unit mass to the rads than wet steam at a constant pressure. My counterflow system takes a beating even with a small amount of wet steam. The rads take longer to heat. Water quality is very important in my case, all other factors being equal.

ethicalpaul · January 31

My counterflow system takes a beating even with a small amount of wet steam. The rads take longer to heat.

How do you determine your amount of wet steam? If the rads are taking longer to heat, where is the heat going?

RTW · January 31

Excellent discussion on this thread! However, this thread is above my physics education or knowledge

BTU defined for those of us less educated that may help to follow debate:

"A Btu was originally defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by one degree Fahrenheit at a constant pressure of one atmospheric unit. There are several different definitions of the Btu that differ slightly. This reflects the fact that the temperature change of a mass of water due to the addition of a specific amount of heat (calculated in energy units, usually joules) depends slightly upon the water's initial temperature. …"

All the best,

RTW

clammy · January 31

Paul a boiler and its piping can indeed emit the equivalent heat equal to the edr that they contain or as much as the boiler can give them and how much they can out put depending upon there edr ,the surrounding ambient temp . The bigger difference is if ya following a little physics is hi pressure to low pressure n high temp to low temp s so if a main and it s associated piping is colder the the boiler temp and pressure and temp will head towards it .Correct so only if a steam main is a higher temp w the ability to maintain temp steam will steam not condense and on the same note where would the extra heat to change the condensate back to steam coming from ? Its not getting free energy from the piping its coming from the boiler plain and simple unless you have discovered some new form of self appearing energy in which case you had better patient it and i mean quickly or on to some thing that every major world wide agency ,government and eow ers have been searching for free energy .It does not and has never existed true perpetual motion it exists only w natural water, solar system and such, man does not command such abilities as of yet its nature .The rules of nature are only bound w the passage time ,temperature or lack of and pressure or lack of and space or area .

But i will say i give you credit as for sticking to your guns but having a open mind only happens when you know that there's more then the eye and mind can conceive and comprehend at least for myself . Next lets all talk about something interesting the relationship between quantum physics and the tao of the universe and there relationship w ancient cultures and there lost yet advanced binary mathematics (mandala prints ).One day they all will be returning ,being history always repeats itself and nothing is new just rediscovered ,reused and rethought . Now lets discuss colloidal magnetism in refrigeration ,computing and possibly fusion this is some thing slightly new i would think .

ya know i barely got out of high school no less grade school just learning to chew gum and walk at the same time again while dragging those knuckles .

peace and good luck clammy

ethicalpaul · January 31

Thanks @clammy !

You know I had the same thought that you expressed that once steam condensed, that was that, it was going to remain water until it got back to the boiler.

But my sight glasses proved to me otherwise. Once the pipes are steam hot, there is no condensate visible anymore (I'm talking about condensate forming on the walls of the pipe). The steam passing through those pipes has enough energy that it re-evaporates the condensate that forms on the pipe wall. This is observed on the vertical risers from the boiler to the header and also from the header to the main, and I assume the same thing takes place throughout the pipes.

This is why I don't really worry about insulating pipes anymore as a concern regarding wet steam. My uninsulated sight glasses show no condensation forming on them once they heat up. Condensation can be seen as they are heating up of course. Now glass is a poor conductor of heat, but I also don't see condensate dripping down into the glass from the steel above it.

And respectfully, if a boiler and its pipes could emit all the heat that is created by the fire underneath, then no steam would form. The heat would just escape into the basement. Steam forms exactly because there is too much heat being generated to escape. It goes into the water, raising it to boiling, spending a LOT of heat energy to convert it to steam. And regardless of how many droplets of water might be in some of that steam, the steam is created, and it flows upstairs in the pipes.

That's the crux of what I'm saying here…bad piping just doesn't affect efficiency much or at all—the heat gets upstairs. It's definitely never worth the cost of repiping. The one caveat is: if the piping is so bad that surging results, then you want to fix that because surging is annoying as ****. But even surging still generates steam—again because there's no where else for the heat to go.

hot_rod · January 31

Does the Weil McLain glass pipe demo trailer shed any light on these questions and observations. It gives you a bigger picture, with more clear piping. I think Tim D hangs around here, he ran that demo for a while.

https://www.google.com/search?q=weil+mclain+steam+demo&oq=weil+mclain+steam+demo&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRiPAjIHCAcQIRiPAtIBCDczNjRqMGo0qAIAsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e6e4742f,vid:ovFq-RPdK1M,st:0

ChrisJ · January 31

We've all seen what happens when a boiler (empty) tries to dissipate all of the heat the burner puts into it.

It's not pretty and it doesn't last long.

Long Beach Ed · January 31

Oh Paul, if that were true, we wouldn't be in business. There are so many systems out there that are hugely hindered by bad piping. Some more than others, of course, and as you observations illustrate — steam is very forgiving, up to a point. I've been called into witness countless boilers, improperly piped, that woun't heat more than two or three out of a dozen radiators. Some down feed apartment houses even run all day long without so much as one radiator seeing steam.

In those cases, the burner's firing. The BTUs are being released by the fuel, but the steam is of such poor quality that it can't carry them. They simply reheat water that is being cooled over and over again without steaming.

Condensate isn't always water that pours. Much condensate can be entrained in vapor. If all that steam you see in your clear riser was never coming back, where's it gone to after the vents close? Your boiler would be empty in an hour. It comes back, but often as wet steam - steam depleted of its BTUs - an aerosol, with the appearance of fuel oil after it leaves the nozzle aerated.

ChrisJ · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839243#Comment_1839243

I'm far from an expert, but I don't think it does. They intentionally cause it to develop excessive carry over through several methods. One is to let it build pressure and then dump the valve open which sucks water out of the boiler due to excessive velocities.

I believe this was to really drive home the importance of proper piping.

I like the demo, but it doesn't seem to really show real world performance with good clean water and proper piping in a residential system.

EBEBRATT-Ed · January 31

Again, the reason we fix boiler piping and skim boilers is to prevent the wet steam that those two problems cause.

If wet steam isn't a problem, why do we insist on fixing these issues?

ethicalpaul · January 31

Well again there is confusion regarding the term "wet steam". Is it little droplets of water, or is it surging?

I make two assertions:

"Wet Steam" if it's defined as steam with droplets of water is no big deal, and in fact is ever-present in our systems. All our steam is on the verge of condensing. If little droplets of water can supposedly be carried all the way to radiators, then even a drop header isn't going to prevent that.
Surging is different. It's annoying, causes LWCO to activate, and hurts the vents and makes water spray where we don't want it to.

If the water is dirty/oily enough to cause surging that should definitely be fixed via skimming.

If the boiler piping is bad enough that it causes surging, it should be fixed, but I'm pretty sure that is quite rare (as we have all seen ridiculously bad piping that is not surging).

So yes, pipe boilers correctly, but no don't freak out if some piping seems crazy but isn't causing surging. There is no way that you will gain any measurable efficiency from repiping.

ChrisJ · January 31

@ethicalpaul I've seen bad piping that caused the boiler to puke it's entire contents up into the mains.

A friend of my wife's had it when she had a new boiler installed and the installers refused to fix it, saying that's just how steam is.

We recommend she hire @JohnNY to fix it, and he did.

I don't know what ever happened with that whole situation as far as the original installers etc, but the piping with an undersized "vertical header" completely broke the system. I think it was all propress copper too. It did heat, but not quietly and not properly.

I think a big part of this is as I said earlier. If the system ran continuously, maybe things would somehow equalize, but running in small bursts carry over could cause some really bad effects as far as putting heat where it needs to be?

tim smith · January 31

what do you think life left in boiler? Whether replace boiler or not, you could install a high high quality sidewall venter for boiler. Enervex (use to be Exhausto) are incredibly quiet long lasting cast alum fans. Built for this, I’ve used them and real nice. Maybe repipe header to correct issues with piping and improve venting. Still probably way cheaper than converting to hot water and less liability from water leaks on any old pipe or radiators. This at least would cover chimney removal. Not sure it would improve any fuel usage.
Just a thought.

ethicalpaul · January 31

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1839265#Comment_1839265

For sure, that's why I said "If the boiler piping is bad enough that it causes surging, it should be fixed"

EBEBRATT-Ed · January 31

We all have seen boiler pipe horribly that worked ok. And we have seen boiler pipe with only a few issues that don't work well.

Old snowman boiler with a supply pipe coming out , no header and no equalize and they were fine.

It depends on the size of the boiler and how it is designed.

I have seen boilers that were horribly oversized with undersized piping that worked ok. Why? because the piping was undersized for that steam boiler. The boiler is capable of producing more steam than the system can use because it is oversized for the system but the system is small in relation to the oversized boiler so the demand is low enough that the undersized piping can handle it.

As @hotrod says the radiation and the boiler seek to maintain equilibrium

LRCCBJ · January 31

I have seen boilers that were horribly oversized with undersized piping that worked ok. Why? because the piping was undersized for that steam boiler. The boiler is capable of producing more steam than the system can use because it is oversized for the system but the system is small in relation to the oversized boiler so the demand is low enough that the undersized piping can handle it.

We are talking about two completely different things.

Horribly oversized boilers with proper piping (albeit small) will work perfectly fine. They will send properly dry steam to the radiation. They will just cycle endlessly, especially if the H/O uses setback. The piping simply cannot move the steam that the boiler produces.

Not worth this discussion.

Savings ???? Repipe

Comments

Laugh Out Loud: Jack Crashes Miles’ Saab

Categories