A home brewed test rig for steam traps CH

Christian Egli

Some time ago, at the height of the cappuccino fad, I broke down and bought an espresso machine. It has buttons on which to push for getting coffee - how novel - and it has a button that says steam…

This, of course, took my mind on a long side track.

The spout that delivers steam is meant for frothing whatever juice you put under. At Starbucks they do it all day long, they even add panache and fancy vocabulary. For me, the novelty wore off rather quickly.

At any rate, the “in” thing to drink now is green tea, so say the experts on TV. You’d think I now have a useless machine? Not so. I found a fascinatingly simple and very conclusive use for the steam spout.

All the while I enjoy my coffee and froth, I can easily blast some steam into a thermostatic trap, then watch it come out the outlet until the time it shuts. Exciting stuff.

You can get a very quick idea of whether the trap works, leaks, is failed shut, and how slow or quick it is at opening and closing.

Today, I had a neat coffee break playing with a load of old and new traps we have. There are wild differences between each. This proved to be very educational. I was generally surprised at how slow they are at reopening.

We do have an area in our shop where we can set up and test traps by connecting them to the steam heat. But there is no steam in the summer, plus, dealing with the fittings is slow. With the espresso machine, I got to test a whole box full of traps in the time it takes to eat a doughnut.

Meanwhile, the forgotten coffee got cold. Nothing to worry, a little blast of steam got it promptly reheated.

Not to burn myself, I carefully held the traps with a folded towel.

Crude stuff but fun, no?