Steam to hot water conversion in LARGE building

JC from PA

Looking for advice on converting old 2 pipe steam system to hot water. It currently uses steam coils in air handlers, room fan/coil units, radiators, iron fin tube and cast iron baseboard. Can I re-use supplies? Should I re-use steam coils? What have you seen?

Dennis - Reliable Services

If the radiation will

cover the heatloss, remove all steam traps, orifices, some hand valves have very small orifices to control the rate of steam into radiation these may have to be replaced with water type valves. The cfms over those fan coils may have to be reduced as the air temp. is going to be lower because the coil temp is lower.
If this is a junk building and does not make money with the steam system it has. I would just remove the above components and pipe up the new boiler or boilers and let it rip. Fix it as you go, the building owner would have to be on the same page. I have hooked hot water boilers to two pipe steam systems, buy removing the elements from the steam traps, and piping to the existing mains less the equlizer line and it has worked. One landlord saved 50% on his gas bill!

Steamhead

You could achieve similar savings

by fixing what's there. This situation also has more pitfalls than the usual as your fan coils probably handle at least some outside air. It's much easier for a coil to freeze when running hot-water than with steam.

You should look at the "Steam boiler efficiency" thread further down the Wall. As of now it has 24 postings in it on this same topic. I'm going to post to that thread again to move it up to the top of the Wall where it's easier to see.

Also check out http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=22 which lists the usual pitfalls in this type of conversion.

I like steam heat- can you tell?



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