Steam to hot water systeam ?

Rich Kontny

Wet Heads,

I have heard of and have been beat on bid jobs where in order to meet budgets two pipe steam systems are converted to hotwater by taking out the steam trap components, repiping around or replacing the boiler and sizing the pump(s) to overcome the obvious resistance. Is this practical?

MP 1969

Boilerpro

It Depends ( one of the world's best answers)

If the piping is good, it can make alot of sense. Also you don't necessarily need that much flow because usually the radiation is way overized even by hot water standards. I converted a one pipe system and the rads run about 140F average on the design day. You don't have to run 20F delta tee across the system, increase to 30 and the flow and pressure drop goes down substancially. Also, you can now easily put in a boiler sized to the building load instead of the radiation. Big up front cost savings and much higher efficiency. Are you sure the jobs you lost were due to lower bids by other contractors or did they have a higher bid and sell the clients on much lower operating costs of the hot water conversion?

Boilerpro

Steamhead

But

if the piping or some other part of the system is bad, it can be a major headache and money pit. I like steam, and like to repair these old systems. I find it's easier to do this than convert them, and once they're fixed up the fuel bills go down.

There's a good article in Hot Tech Topics on this subject. Paste this link into your browser to get there:

http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=22

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kf_2

Steam to Hot Water

It can be extremeley advantageous to convert 2 pipe steam systems to forced hot water systems and it is typically not as involved as you might think.

(1) the steam traps must either be removed or the guts taken out.

(2) if there are TRV's they should be replaced.

(3) the heat emmiters must be checked to ensure that they can properly heat the space at lower temps. (not usually a problem)

(4) the integrity of the pipes should be inspected to make sure they can handle the increased pressures. Usually it is only the returns that need replacing if anything.

(5) make sure that the return piping is sized to handle the flow for the new system. The suplly piping is typically more that adequate.

If all this is O.K. than the savings in fuel, maintenance, and operating costs can be substantially reduced. We would see anywhere from 30% - 65% easily. Typically the existing radiation was so oversized that they mhere great applications for condensing boilers.