steam to hot water problem

Russ White

While changing a steam to hot water system we ran in to a strange and maybe costly problem. The system has several steam basebaords that were manufactured around 1930, they have two 1/2" pipes in what looks like high out put baseboard of comercial size. This is a two pipe system with a supply and return, we tried both as supply. Either way the water flows thru there is a very loud humming sound. Thought it might be a problem with harmonics but throttling down flow doesn't make the noise go away. Would like to know if any one knows what might be going on. Name on them I believe is Trane manufactured in Wisconson.

Russ White

found problem

We found the problem. There were orfice's in the convectors themselves. Hope no one else ever tries this one.

Big Ed

Always wondered......

.......if it's worth converting a steam system over to hot water with using the old radiation. You the installer could run in to alot of loss time and money if you gave a set price for the job . Have you done alot ? What is your experience ?

P.S. I always talked them into fixing the old system , maybe a new boiler

Russ White

special case

I agree that there can be problems. Most times we convert over we use new baseboard, wirsbo and etc. This is a special house and customer. It is an old house located next to the ocean and the customer wants to keep the charm of the old but wants to be responseable and save fuel. We may make some money or maybe we will lose some.
The challege of doing this job however was just to much for the boss to pass up.

Steamhead

This is one reason why

I like to fix steam systems and don't recommend converting them to hot-water. You never know what's going to jump up and bite you. This sounds like a Trane Orifice Vapor system.

I don't agree that if "customer wants to keep the charm of the old but wants to be responseable (sic) and save fuel" that the only solution is to convert to hot-water. There are too many pitfalls and the results can be underwhelming. Even if you use a condensing boiler, you won't gain much efficiency since the system will run too hot for the boiler to condense. And you can hear the Dead Men spinning in their graves.....

We'va had people with steam systems cut their fuel consumption up to 75% by just fixing whatever problems their systems had, and maybe installing a more-efficient boiler. This is a far less risky and more cost-effective solution.

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Russ White

I have steam

I my self have steam heat in my own home. So don't get me wrong. I don't go out to convince people that they should change over. But the fact that hot water systems right now are the topic of the day, customers want to change over. There is much more information out there framed as (hydronics), (European), (hydro-air) and etc. We are a society of buzz words and buzz words sell product. Try to sell someone steam in a new house that has read up on radiant heat in floor, towel racks, most even heat, used in Europe, the list goes on and on. How many people can tell you that they have read up on steam. How to balance radiators so that the last one will give off heat. That relatively cheap air vents need to be changed. There are a few customers that have steam and want to keep it. They understand that the fore mentioned things need to be done. Still others give up when they can not find techs that can do the work.

Steamhead

I've put in steam from scratch

The biggest advantage of steam is that the pipes drain dry when the system is off (except for the boiler itself and wet returns), so the danger of freezing damage is greatly minimized.

There are a couple more buzzwords to consider: "Uncertain energy future" which may mean people can't get fuel when they need it, and "extended power failure" like we've had in California and the Northeast. Either can mean the house cools down below freezing and causes pipes to burst, resulting in expensive repair work. These things can happen anywhere, anytime; so far most of us have been lucky.

The other things you cite are things a good steam man can fix. I have never had a customer who was considering converting to hot-water actually go thru with it when I got the steam system working as it should- which usually doesn't take much effort at all.

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Mark_35

Thanks for the advice

Thanks for all your advice guys. I have the system running at about 1 psi now – works fine. The pressuretrol is about bottomed out. I don’t get the impression that the return trap ever operates now, but I don’t have a sight glass on it to be sure.

All the radiator traps are way more than 30 inches above the water line. But there are two end of main traps (Trane B-2) that are 10 – 15” below the water line. Now that I think of it these must operate pretty much in a flooded condition now. These seem to vioilate the B rule, but everything works fine. Funny, I replaced one of the cage units, and it was not flooded with water. Can’t figure that out.

Maybe I will keep that return trap just to leave the system as much like it is not as possible. It does work beautifully, except the boiler is so huge. I think that the big energy loss with this boiler seems to be during the swing seasons, when it has to burn a lot of gas just to make steam. Any recommendations for a 125MBH (input) replacement. I kind of like the atmospheric burner, so if there is an extended power outage I can run it off of a car battery and in inverter.