Strange flap inside condensate side of 2 pipe radiator

ethicalpaul

My friend has a big old house in Hamtramck Michigan with a big 2 pipe system

He found this inside the union on the condensate side of a radiator. It swings freely. There is a trap under it in the basement.

Anyone know what it is? Some check valve to hold vacuum or something??

EBEBRATT-Ed

@ethicalpaul

I don't know but looking at the trap in the basement it looks like with the extra elbows like it may have been added after the fact.

What are the other radiators telling you?

Maybe the little flapper was the trap and the thermostatic traps were added after, Any Name on anything? Any cross over traps or boiler return trap etc?

mattmia2

this smells a whole lot like a vapor system that someone put a radiator trap on because they didn't understand it. what do the radiator valves look like? any devices near the boiler?

Steamhead

This is a Kriebel system. The flap is called a "baffler" and serves to keep steam from backing into the rad if the rad goes into vacuum, as might happen if someone closes the radiator shutoff valve when the steam is up.

The shutoff valves probably have the label "The Vapor Vacuum Heating Company" around the handle, and a logo "VVH" on the side that looks something like the Van Halen logo.

There should be a large air vent on the dry return near the boiler. The original looks like a beam-balance on a scale, and it was mounted in the floor joists above the boiler.

See chapter 15 of @DanHolohan 's book "The Lost Art of Steam Heating" available in the Store of this site. The latest version is called "Revisited".

And yes, it looks like the trap was added later.

mattmia2

@Steamhead, i don't think you need to tell @ethicalpaul what TLAOSH is…

ethicalpaul

thanks all and @Steamhead for the ID

I’m not near the system but I’ll ask him for those verifying identifiers.

It would not surprise me at all if stuff had been incorrectly added over the decades

Steamhead

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1899921#Comment_1899921

That, as always, was for others reading this.