Surgery on a Thermostat

Mark Eatherton1

it's not the pressure-trol on the boiler?

Anticipators are kind of a throw back to the olden days of solid fuel/conversions. The fire box and boiler in general was made to allow a large bank fuel supply that would burn slowly over a long period of time. Many times, the windows served as the "double hung thermostats".

When the boilers were converted to other fuels (gas or oil), the thermostat worked quite well, except for the overshoot that occured due to the grossly oversized boiler. Hence, the "anticipator" circuit. It 'anticipated' the extra heat that was still in the boiler, and shut down the furnace early to allow the house to "coast" up to the desired temperature. Worked great for grossly over sized beasts. With todays systems (other than some steam/ancient hot water systems), we don't use an anticipator in the circuit. Some stats have a "cycle per hour" setting, and some (non electric thermostats) have no anticipation and are extremely accurate and reliable.

JM$0.02W

ME

Steve_23

Surgery on a Thermostat

I have one pipe steam heat. I was siting on the couch one day was was listening to my radiators purge as I do at times(arent we sometimes geeks)? and noticed they stopped, and I knew it wasnt the thermostat being satisfied, it was the anticapator prematurely shutting down the boiler.
I got out my tweezers and soldering iron and removed and bypassed the anticapator. Why would I
rely on currnet that the valve draws to tell me my house is warm? I set the anticapator to the required setting and still, same problem.
I even set it to the extreme and still, same thing.Building pressure in a steam boiler is a precious money I would think, so why would I want loose that when the radiators weren't even warm yet? Any thoughts?

doug_10

That and

make sure the system is venting properly. Vaporstat would be a nice touch.