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ethicalpaul

So many people come here with various real steam problems and we always say "show us pictures of your boiler's piping". Then we tell them all the things wrong with their boiler piping. And we often tell them they need to have expensive repiping performed.

But are we doing them a disservice?

It's become more and more apparent to me that perfect boiler piping just isn't necessary to have a perfectly fine steam system. This is not new thinking! All the old timers have seen boilers with outrageously bad piping that just seem to work.

It has become clear to me that the much more important aspect is water quality.

Watch the video that I made today and see what you think.

https://youtu.be/M-VfPSYyRQM

patrykrebisz

Your videos are awesome!

Wouldn't that S curve at some point completely fill out with water??

ethicalpaul

Thanks! I shared your concern in the video and we'll have to see the next video to get the answer on that!

But more importantly, what did you think about my findings and thoughts about the piping?

Jamie Hall

In general I think your findings are fine — although I'm much less concerned about water quality than I think you are.

As a friend of mine who does towing has said, there are many ways to get to 10. That applies to steam. In my view, while there are preferred ways to do things — particularly in near boiler piping — so long as the basic principles are there the thing will work. What are these? There has to be provision to allow any carryover splashing to get bacck to the boiler without getting into the steam mains. Lots of ways to do that. There hase to be ways for air to get out of the steam mains and radiators. Lots of ways to do that. There have to be ways for the condensate to get back to the boiler reasonably freely (I expect well over half the problems we see are here). And there has to be a small but controlled pressure difference to allow the steam and air to move.

That's it.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Weather it is steam or anything else one of the most difficult things for me at least is to go into a cobbled up job where they are having problems and it looks like it was piped by a bunch of monkey's. Usually looks like crap, the pipe sizes may be wrong, it may be the wrong material (copper) the wrong size boiler etc etc.

Where do you start is the difficult thing.

If you a building owner or homeowner you can piecemeal the thing and take all the time you need to try this or try that and try to make it work.

But if your a contractor you can't do that. Labor prices are too high (not to mention the material). If you go in and try and tweak it and it doesn't work then you get called back so you try something else and that doesn't fix it either.

Now the customer gets the bill and explodes because it still isn't fixed. Better to go in and fix it get in get out get paid,

No win situation sometimes.

If you fix it and they pay a big bill (yeah that sucks) but if its fixed in the long run they will say "yeah it cost a lot but its fixed"

mattmia2

then you have ones where it looks more or less ok but still has a problem like that 2 pipe system someone posted a couple months ago where there must have been enough steam velocity to keep the condensate from following the pitch in a counterflow main.

109A_5

@ethicalpaul Great video, I wish I had that drive and motivation.

I think on a forum like this best practice should be to promote best practice. Will steam heating still work with near boiler piping that is not optimum, we all know it will. To me when troubleshooting any system, steam, electrical, etc. observe all the deficiencies, oddities and defects, deal with the easy, quick, inexpensive stuff first like obvious poor water quality, pipe pitch, see where it leads.

At the time of installing a new boiler best practice should be to promote best practice.

PC7060

First of all, let me say, I admire your tenacity creativity and exploring the arcane world of steam boilers. 💨

In my world the OEM requirements for configuration are gospel unless signed off by a the OEM FAI. I understand that low pressure residential steam boilers can operate under non-optimal configurations but I agree with @EBEBRATT-Ed and @109A_5 that excluding elements of the recommended OEM configuration exposes contractor to risk and liability.

ethicalpaul

Are you all under the impression that I am saying that installation instructions should be ignored? (this is an honest question, I can't tell! 😅)

I’m not sure why people keep hearing this.

I’m talking about how best to assist people who come here with issues.

I have shown that most piping errors do not prevent good operation, but rather, it is water quality that is the root cause.

Jamie Hall

Confusion reigns! (What else is new?). No, I don't think you are saying installation instructions should be ignored, @ethicalpaul . At least I don't read it that way. I think that what you are doing is exploring some fascinating corners of steam heat — which, as I have said before but without the hand-on fiddling yuo are doing, is incredibly forgiving.

I think it's clear enough that if you are installing a new boiler, you'd , be slightly nuts not to follow the manufacturer's recommendations — as an absolute minimum (you'd be amused at the overkill we did when installing Cedric).

Where it gets difficult is, as the folks above have said, is where you are dealing with an existing installation which is having problems. This becomes a judgement .call, and has to be based on a combination of experience and overall cost, as much as anything. Sometimes the best approach is to rip the whole thing out and start all over. Each situation will be a new challenge.

Intplm.

@ethicalpaul My compliments on another nice video.

Dry steam for definition purposes may equal the least amount of water vapor where wet steam would have the most before it changes state back to water. When steam and condensate travel in the same pipe it is a counterflow system changing state as the temperature changes in that pipe.

When I see a video like this I tend to think that I have customers, manufacturers, and inspectors and payroll to satisfy when changing and piping a steam boiler. I have to get it right. These videos give me some grace in thinking that I might have some leeway in the process. However, to satisfy the above I am bound by rules that work in the customers favor and there for my own. Again liked the video, heck, all of your videos.

PC7060

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1891608#Comment_1891608

You fill the “10th Man“ role for the residential steam community, challenging assertions so we don’t fall into group think!

EdTheHeaterMan

Technically, dry steam equals superheated steam—that is, steam with no water content at all. (but maybe not)

To make the point more clear, I go back to the definition of a BTU. One BTU is the amount of energy necessary to raise one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. We know that when water reaches 212°F, it will turn into a gas at sea-level atmospheric pressure.

To turn an entire pound of water from 212°F liquid to 212°F gas, it requires 970 BTU of energy. So when you add one more BTU of energy to that pound of water, the steam becomes superheated gas. That would be dry steam.

If you have a container (a boiler and radiator connected with pipes is effectively a container) and there is any amount of liquid water present, then you do not have superheated steam. By definition, you have wet steam.

If this were any other substance (like a refrigerant), we would say the system is saturated. The liquid is at the boiling point and the vapor is at the condensing point at the same time within that container.

To follow up on (but maybe not) We treat steam a little differently from other elements and compounds for some reason.

Dry steam is actually saturated steam with little or no liquid water carried with it. That is what we are trying to achieve in a steam heating system. We do not want to make superheated steam that stays superheated. We want to make steam that is as close to 100% vapor as possible as it leaves the boiler, and then have that steam condense back to water when it reaches the radiator so we can reap the benefits of all that heat energy in the rooms of our buildings.

At that point we want the steam to condense and give off all that heat into the rooms. The goal is for the piping system to deliver that saturated steam from the boiler to the radiators with as little energy loss as possible.

So, to be more clear about “dry steam,” we are really looking for what Paul is calling “wet steam” with as little “wet” in it as possible.

We still use the terms wet steam and dry steam the way they were used historically, back when the science was not widely understood. The average steam fitter knew that you needed a clean water surface, clean water, and large boiling surfaces to get the job done.

The detailed science of steam only became necessary when a problem appeared and someone needed to analyze it more deeply. So we use the term dry steam when we actually mean saturated steam that is almost completely a gas, even though we have found the science that defines our antiquated terms to be incorrect.

We still use many terms incorrectly, like sunrise and sunset, when we now know that the sun is not doing any moving at all to create that phenomenon. And a Shooting Star is not really a star at all, but we still use that term.

ethicalpaul

Thanks @Jamie Hall and @PC7060 and others, you get me 😂

I did want to reply to one thing Jamie wrote:

Where it gets difficult is, as the folks above have said, is where you are dealing with an existing installation which is having problems. This becomes a judgement .call, and has to be based on a combination of experience and overall cost, as much as anything. Sometimes the best approach is to rip the whole thing out and start all over. Each situation will be a new challenge.

But I think I'm showing that there is really almost never any need to rip anything out and start over (at least until the next boiler replacement). I will assert that almost any boiler installation will make good steam as long as the water quality is good.

Look how good my steam is in this video with a direct 1-1/4" pipe directly from the boiler to the main. Heck, even that ridiculous S-curve isn't causing any fuss. This is because my water is good. If I put a tablespoon of oil in there I would have a main full of liquid water.

ChrisJ

Curious.

Does anyone have the installation manual to an Ideal Red flash boiler for steam? I wasn't able to find one last time I tried.

There's a reason I'm asking and it relates to this thread I promise. I'm not that senile yet.

Jamie Hall

@EdTheHeaterMan 's comments up there on "dry" and "wet" steam are absolutely correct, and thank you for going down that rabbit hole. I've caused enough trouble with comments on naming returns that I didn't want to…

Saturated steam — which is all we ever work with in residential use — has some fascinating properties, but being an ideal gas or even close isn't one of them. This can cause all kinds of merriment when people try to treat it as such…