Piping question

Glenn Koenig

I purchased a colonial house from 1927. The heat is steam heat. However the previous owner thought he was handier than he really was. He took out the cast iron radiators and put in baseboards. However, after recently having a plumber check it out, he has piping for a hot water heater in the baseboards. The heat doesn't seem to come out through the baseboards. There are a couple of steam baseboards and they work fine. The furnace only kicks on for very short periods of time. Does this inflate the bill by going on and off more frequently? And is there anything I could do to get the other baseboards working?

Steamhead

It depends

the usual 3/4-inch fin-tube baseboard doesn't work well with steam. Cast-iron baseboard works great but must be piped 2-pipe rather than 1-pipe.

If you want to stay with fin-tube, Slant/Fin's Multi-Pak 80 baseboard with the 1-1/4" steel pipe element works great. But again, it must be piped 2-pipe rather than 1-pipe.

You can do the 2-pipe setup one of two ways: "Air-Vent" uses a vent on each baseboard, and has the return line dropping below the boiler water level before connecting to the main return. "Vapor" uses either an orifice at the inlet or a trap on the outlet, and a "dry" return above the waterline. Air and water pass from the baseboards into the dry return. The air goes out thru a central vent near the boiler. Water drops back to the boiler.

Either setup can be used with thermostatic radiator inlet valves.



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