Venting unit heater in basement. steam system

Jack Demczuk

This is driving me nuts. I have a one pipe steam system. or so I think according to what i have read here. I have a main that comes off my boiler and runs around the whole basement. It has risers, one for each radiator and at the end of the main in the basement there is a main vent then the pipe gets smaller and returns to the boiler. I believe this is known as a dry return. at the boiler the return has one final vent then it drops down to the boiler where it is connected to the hartford loop. the return used to hammer a lot so i pulled the final vent before it drops to the boiler. hammer gone, but is this ok. i figure the system can get up to pressure sooner because the steam does not have to traven in my return, but why did the installers do this then? Actually I have another question here too. I installed a unit heater in the basement and tapped it off right after the last riser before the main vent. I ran a seperate dry return back to the boiler into the hartford loop below the water line. i also installed a steam vent immediatly after the unit heater. this works but when the boiler first starts creating steam the unit heater gets nice and hot, but when the steam vent shuts the unit heater loses all it's heat and doesn't get hot until the steam vent cools and opens again. this cycle continues and i never get any real quantity of heat. i tried to install a steam trap and that didn't work unless i made the return drip. since i don't use a condensate return pump this adds up to several gallons of water a day down the drain. the only thing that seems to work is to install a bank of like five steam vents after the unit heater, that way one is always slightly open and the unit heater is always filled with hot steam. is this ok, what is the correct way to do this. I do this for a hobby, but it is slowly becoming a passion of mine. is anyone hiring? Anyway, thanks for any help you may offer.
-Jack

Steamhead (in transit)

You can leave off

the vent at the end of the dry return. It is not needed since there is a vent at the end of the steam main.

Are you sure the unit heater vent isn't being flooded with water? If it's in the active range of the "A" dimension this can be a problem. Try connecting it as high as possible above the waterline.

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