Steamer Question

Dale

In dan's book on pg 125 this is covered as well as a nice discription in the hydron. inst. "Installation guide - residential hydronic heating" pg 10-37, which I think is a great picture. This covers the 2 pipe with the vent where each and every radiator goes separately into the wet return. As far as the swing checks I have never seen a system as described by Mr. M. in the other post.

Jamie_6

Hey guys,

Out on a bid I came across this old steam system in Philadelphia. I thought that a two pipe steam system does not have air vents on the rads? This system also has little checks on the returns? Anyone know what they are all about?

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ScottMP

ah yes

That is a Horizontal wall hung steam system, the vents are there because the Horizontal piping dosnt allow good flow of the condesate.

It can be easly converted to a vertical system which would then be a vapor vacuum.



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ScottMP

uhhh

I was joking about the picutes being sideway

Sorry, I thought you guys would get it

Scott

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Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

Maybe I'm nuts,

but those don't look like check valves to me; they look more like old plug valves so that the individual radiators can be isolated from the system for repair or to manually turn off a radiator.

And I'll even venture that it's not 2-pipe, but 1-pipe.

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Steamhead

It's 2-pipe, air-vent

the "missing link" between one-pipe and Vapor.

Jamie, whatever you do, don't vent the return lines. They don't carry air like those in a Vapor system.

Vent the steam mains just like you would on a one-pipe system. Then you can replace that old Ideal Airid rad vent, and all its companions, with vents sized to the air in the rads.

The check valves were probably installed to do the same thing we now use a Hartford Loop for.

It's easy to see why that Columbia/Utica died- I know your piping job will be much better!

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Wes_2

Paging steamhead

Steamhead
WRT your above post

I am the homeowner of above hybrid system. A rep. from Columbia is coming over today to check out the corpse of the old boiler. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about the piping.

After examining all the piping in the basement, we were unable to find any vent at the end of our steam main. Is that normal in this type system or do you think it was removed at some point. Most rads have Hoffmans that seemed to function OK last winter. I've checked out Gorton vent website. They appear to size vents based on distance from boiler not according to air in rads as you mentioned above. Is one approach more appropriate for our system? If the ancient vents are functional, is there any benefit to changing them when the new boiler goes in?
Thanks,
Amy

Thad English

hybrid

Amy,



As your neighbor who has the same hybrid 2-pipe air vent steam system as you, I can tell you that adding a main vent will make a world of difference in how everything runs: Much less gas use, and a lot faster heating. I switched most of my radiator vents to Gortons and the place heated evenly and, more importantly, quickly. By putting the biggest ones farthest from the boiler you get those rads filling with steam at the same rate as the rads on the ground floor. Makes for a really comfortable house.


Most of our radiator vents were way too small to get the air out at a reasonable rate so they ended up hissing really loudly. Since the main vent did not work properly the rads were the only way to get air out of the system and as a result the pressure in the system increased quckly. That led to the boiler shutting off on hi-limit since I set the pressurtrol at 1lb. Which made the house not heat up unless I had the pressure set higher, which used more natural gas, which costs a helluva lot of dinero. Basically, replacing those old radiator vents with ones that get the air out quickly will pay for themselves in fuel savings fairly fast. My experience was that they paid for themselves in one month. I am sure that Jamie's redoing of the near-boiler piping on our system made the biggest difference but the Gorton radiator vents do help. I can't wait to see how much lower our gas usage is this winter.


Good luck. If you decide to go with the Gorton radiator vents, everyone says to talk to Ken Kunz at Gorton. I speak from experience that he is a very helpful (and patient) guy.


-Thad

Thad English

I have the same check valves on my system. and I live down the block from Amy. They were originally intended to stop water from backing out of the boiler. Now they basically just collect debris. When one clogs I plan on just removing it and putting in straight pipe. I have a properly done hartford loop (here is where I plug Pompetti Heating) so the check valves are just a redundancy.
-T

Steamhead

Amy & Thad

I'm familiar with Gorton's sizing methods, but those have been pretty much superseded by "Master Venting", which was originally conceived by Frank Gerety, a.k.a. the Steam Philosopher. The same principle is found in Dan's "Dead Men's Steam School" video and workbook, which is available on the Books and More page of this site.

Basically you size your main vents to fill the mains with steam in about a minute. Then all you have to do with the radiators is vent them according to how much air is in them. The Steam School workbook has all the charts needed to do this.

If your system does not have main vents, you're wasting lots of fuel. Measure the length and diameter of your mains and we can tell you what vents they need.

Steamhead

You can usually

just remove the flapper in the check valve. This saves a lot of labor.

Thad English

Excellent advice. I believe I will be doing that the next time one clogs. Muchas gracias.
-Thad

Thad English

master venting

Interesting concept. In my house, most of the radiators are the same size. There are 2 pair on the first floor that match each other. All of the second floor are identical and the third floor range in size from tiny (6 section, 2 tube) to gigantic (24 section, 2 tube). Would the tiny third floor rad get a small vent and the gigantic one get a large vent? Since they are both on the third floor it would seem that the huge one would heat much faster. How does the master venting theory account for the different lengths of riser? Or does the size of the vent take that riser into account?

Steamhead

Yes, those third floor radiators

would get vents based on their size. I'm sure the riser to the big one is bigger than the riser to the little one, and the extra air in the big riser has to be vented too.

Of course if they don't heat up evenly, you can always adjust the vent sizes.

Matt Undy

Good idea for unneeded check valve, bad idea for main shutoffs

I lived in an apartment where somone had broken the stem of the gate valve at the meter and removed the guts... Fortunately the 75 year old gate valve on the street side of the meter held well enough to sweat in a new ball valve if one cracked the union on th emeter and directed the leakage into a bucket. I've got to think there is some sort of incredible liablility associated with whoever left the valve like that. BTW the broken valve was in much newere copper pipe.

Matt