Even heating?

Fred Clough

After two years of living with steam heat, I'm still trying to fine tune the nine radiators I have in a two family. I've installed all new Hoffman vents, a vaporstat, new main vents.

When the heat kicks on, should all radiators receive the steam at the same time? Some do, some don't...depends on how cold it is out and how long the system heats up.

I'm not sure when "enough dinking around" is enough....anyone have any thoughts?

Constantin

Ideally, all radiators will heat at the same time...

... the trick being that the folks who designed and installed the system actually tried to make all the steam circuits of equivalent resistance as far as the need for steam is concerned. IIRC, that can be done with a variety of ways, from locating the main vents in certain areas to changing the pipe sizes to make some circuits harder to get into than others.

When you state that they don't heat at the same time, are we talking hours or minutes?

Audrey_2

Same problem

I am having similar problems and have tried exactly the same things - running to each radiator, making adjustments to the air valve (replaced a few with new valves also) and all of my radiators heat only half way through and two barely get warm. The thermostat has been on 70 for the past two days and strangely all the radiators feel very hot only half way through. the two that barely get warm have taken two days to do so.

Dale

Vents?

When you say new hoffman vents do you mean rad vents or rad and main vents. The main vents need to work quickly to get the steam near the rads. If your boiler is turned on, as soon as it starts making steam the main at the rad runoff should be hot with steam. Find the main vents and unscrew, thread them in again easily then leave them disconnected and temp.replace with a ball valve, leave that open and start the boiler. When steam comes out the valve close it and go upstairs to check on how hot the rads are. If they are hot go buy a Groton main vent. You may also have a boiler thats shutting off early because it's dirty and needs skimming or because the pressure is too high, clogs ect.

Steamhead

Fred and Audrey

The most important things to check are the vents at the ends of the steam mains. These must be properly sized so the mains will fill with steam in about a minute. Then all your radiators will start getting steam at about the same time.

Also check the system pressure setting. One-pipe steam was designed to never need more than 2 pounds- and that's on the coldest day of the year. It should only take a few ounces of pressure to circulate steam thru the system at start-up. The pressure control (usually a small gray box) should be turned all the way down.

If you don't have main vents or are not sure what to buy, or if you're just not comfortable doing any of this, go to the Find a Professional page of this site to locate someone near you who can straighten your systems out. If you're in the Baltimore area, e-mail me.

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