Radiator Failure

Cold Canuck

Greetings from Northern Ontario, Canada

I am writing you in search of information. Our son is a tenant in an older apartment building which uses a boiler and radiator system. It is a two pipe system of some sort (ie. steam or hotwater) but I am unsure how you distinguish between them. The question I have is that the apartment he lives in is always too hot. His apartment is on the second floor of a three story building. He has four exposed heating pipes running up through his apartment to the third floor. He has habitually turned off the rads and occasionally uses opening his windows to regulate the climate. Recently we experienced a deep cold snap (-30 to -40C). One morning he woke up and because his room was very hot he opened his window an inch or two for cool air,something he has done many times before. He left the window open only about five minutes or so then closed it. The rad in that room was off or barely on. Half an hour or so he returned to the room to find water running out of the rad. Subsequent inspection led us to two leaks in the seams of two of the large vertical heating chambers (don't know what you call them) near the lower end but above the cross nipples. Can anyone tell what might have happened?

P.S. As an added note one rad in a back room of the apartment doesn't work at all and the rad in the living room doesn't heat completely along its length.

Dana

If the sections that are leaking were hot and you hit them with -40 degree air it could have cracked that cast iron without question. It sounds like this is a steam system. This would be even more prevalent if it is a steam system.

Steamhead

Look at the boiler

if there is a glass tube showing the water level, it's steam. Since it's two-pipe, it's probably a "Vapor" steam system, which was the Cadillac of heating in its day.

Post some pictures here of anything you're unsure of, and we'll do our best to help.

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Cold Canuck

re: Radiator Failure

Why would the leaks be at the front of the rad rather than in behind? The way I understand it the rad wasn't hot as most of the heat for the apartment comes from the surrounding apartments. Wouldn't the system then leak steam rather than water?