Some more pressuretrol questions / 1 pipe-steam

thfurnitureguy_4

Pete, Do you have oil or gas? and do you know if the burner has been set up to the MFG spec. You said that the system used to short cycle . A common patch is to assume that the boiler is oversized and down fire the burner. This stops short cycle but extends run time.

Is the boiler clean (scale or soot will also cause longer runs and slow steam up). Your system if down fired will most likely not build pressure during a normal cycle. It will simmer along just making steam at a slow rate. It will cost you out the pipe to run this way. You can set your pressuretrol to the roof and it will not change the pressure one bit. (Don't do this) My piont is that a pressuretrol is like an electrical popoff valve. (It won't releave pressure) only shut off the boiler if it is over the set pressure.

Are your pipes insulated? Missing insulation is the same as added radiation, only usually not where you want the heat. It will also make your system run forever. Insulate all the mains and the radiator runs.

You need the Mfg specs and a good burner guy who will work with you on this. Check the insulation and the cleaning stuff first. Best of luck

Pete_18

How should the pressuretrol be working in a well vented system?

I still haven't figured out from the info in past threads if my system is supposed to ever shut off on pressure or not prior to the thermostat being satisfied.

What's bugging me is that it seems the pressuretrol is a key device in ensuring that you don't waste fuel and slow down the rate the steam is traveling by building too much pressure, but I am finding it impossible to know if mine is doing its job. (I have no way of determining if it's ever shutting off the boiler and I have no way of measuring the pressure since the device that shows me the pressure reading has never once moved.)

Theoretically I would think that if my pressuretrol isn't functioning properly, it's the equivalent to running my system at max pressure?

Last time the oil company came out, I specifically asked them to check if the pressuretrol (it is original / from 1978) was functioning properly and if the pigtail was clogged. He tested the pressuretrol by putting his finger in it and raising the lever and when he saw the burner shut off, he claimed it was functioning properly. He didn't do anything to attempt to check the pigtail and it didn't appear he was familiar with any other way to test the pressuretrol. If I'm going to get them to come out and replace it (which may even be included in my service contract), I somehow am going to have to prove to them that it is non functional.

Is the pigtail something I can easily take off myself? This may sound like a really stupid question, but I know very little about the pressuretrol. I'd hate to attempt to take off the pigtail and all of a sudden the whole boiler empties through the hole. If it wasn't for the pigtail, it seems easy enough to buy a replacement unit at the plumbing supply store and replace it.

In addition, my pigtail is facing the wrong way per Dan's book. The donut hole is visible straight on when looking at the pressuretrol. What is the potential impact of this? I tried turning it with my hands, but it didn't want to budge and I didn't want to take a tool to it without asking the right thing to do (nor did i know what the right tool would be).

I just took a level to the pressuretrol to ensure it is level and for what it's worth, it does not appear to be level (it's jammed in between pipes, so it's tough to know for sure, but when I rest the level on top of the metal with the cover removed, it never shows it is level. I didn't see mercury in it, but it could be covered. Did Honeywell use Mercury in their pressuretrols in 1978?

I know that a pressuretrol has trouble measuring such small amounts of pressure compared to a vaporstat, but I'm just not sure what to expect from mine.

I really feel blind as to whether or not the pressuretrol is doing it's job since the stat that shows me the pressure never moves and since I can't tell if the pressuretrol is ever the reason the burner shuts off. I keep feeling that mine doesn't work, but I don't know how to validate this.

will smith_4

Pete-

I gotta guess you that you might not be that handy with a volt meter, and that you probably don't have a pressure guage with a tee and a hand pump laying around to test your pressure-trol. Never-the-less, I'd pick you for my team anyday, because, dog-gone it, you keep coming back! I think you may really WANT to know. I like that!. Ok. For one, Honeywell has been making pressuretrols with mercury switches that HAVE to be level as long as anybody has been making anything. They have also been making mechanical pressuretrols without mercury for just about as long. THESE don't know boo about level. They don't need to be level. It seems that you may have the latter of the two. Way to find out: take the cover off. If you see a mercury switch...it's a mercury switch. If you don't, well, it aint. If it aint, the pigtail could be purple and crosseyed-wouldn't matter. Long as it's clean. And don't worry about taking the pigtail off as long as the boiler's been off for a hour. If the pigtail was installed in the water line, you'd know by now. Two. You need an accurate guage on that boiler of yours. No way around it. Most generic ones register 0-15 or 0-30. As you can imagine, not real helpful for steam sytems. (Although a little low for aircraft carriers) Get one with a range of 0-5, with gradiations you can decifer. Turn off the boiler. Go make a sandwich. Me, I'm low carb, so I'd have some tuna. Come back down. Put the new guage in where the old one was. Make sure to use thread sealant, and don't overtighten it.(just don't break nothin')Turn the boiler back on. Three. Raise the thermostat up to 90. Hang out, watch the boiler. Watch where the burner cycles off in relation to the pressure guage. Write down the pressure it cycles off, and where it cycles back on. Does that correspond to the on/off setpoints of the pressuretrol? Four. You have my e-mail. Let me know what happened. We'll go from there. Good luck!

Pete_18

Thanks

Will,

Thanks for the input. I'm going to follow some of your suggestions and see what I can determine.

1. I'll go to the Plumbing Supply store and get a gauge that goes 0-5 that I can actually decipher pressure < 1 since mine runs 0-15 and is basically useless since it never reads anything. (Even when the mains were unvented, this gauge never moved)

2. Take the pigtail off and make sure it isn't plugged. At least I now know that I shouldn't expect the boiler to empty on me.

3. Double check that there's no mercury in the pressuretrol since it isn't level.

What does appear obvious is that the burner runs non-stop from the time the thermostat calls for heat until the time it is up to temperature. Right now it's 31F out and the thermostat was set to 65F and the burner ran non-stop for 42 minutes.

Bob W._3

42 minutes? What temp was the house when it started that cycle? Sounds like you have some sort of problem, like an undersized boiler or some such. Its below 0 here and my boiler (oversized) will come on and run 8-10 minutes (thats the way I currently have the anticipator set on the T87) and then be off for quite awhile. If my monster ran 42 mintues at a stretch I couldn't afford to run it.

Pete_18

$$

The temperature in the house was 64 degrees when it ran for 42 minutes this evening to bring it up to 65. It took at least 10-15 minutes for the radiator to begin to get hot and then time for the room to heat up. In 8-10 minutes after being idle for 1.5-2.5 hours, my boiler will have barely started producing steam. Interestingly enough, way back when I began dealing with the system, it would cycle on every 15-30 minutes and would heat the radiators near the thermostat in under a few minutes. Unfortunately at that time, the mains were unvented and most of the radiators vents didn't work in the house, so the rest of the house was freezing.

Mains are both vented with Gorton 2s, radiators now have Gorton C's on them, previously had Ventirite No-1s from the 1970s.

Thermostat is a new T87 digital set to the Steam setting (1 cycle per her). With the current outside temperature, the system has been needing to cycle on every 1.5-2.5 hours.

I would like to get a WM SGO, but since I can't afford it right now, I'm trying to survive until them. Burning 10+gal of oil a day plus paying for gas to heat another section of the house without radiators is getting rather expensive, so I keep looking for other items I can improve on until then. Most recently I focused on replacing the vents on the radiators near the thermostat to make sure they weren't taking too long to heat up, and I did some insulating around doors/windows near the thermostat.

Bob W._3

As a fellow steamer, I would say that something is seriously wrong with your system. Perhaps it is time to call in a steam guy. Have you tried a differenct anticipator setting? You should shoot for the boiler to come on for 20 minutes or so at least once per hour (maybe it has been too warm; steam systems seem to work best when its bitter cold out). Why don't you change the digital anticipator to the Hot Water setting (3x/hour) and see how that works. Can't hurt.

Pete_18

called in the pros

I've had 3 professionals that advertise on the board come out and look at or work on my system throughout the troubleshooting process, as well as my oil company.

I have not tried a different timing setting on the T87 digital, but I did try messing with the anticipator settings on the original T87 analog that the system previously had.

I'm sure you're right that if I change the setting it will have an impact, but given that it isn't overshooting the temperature by any more than 1F, do you think I should mess with it? Perhaps I should because by sitting there idle for the 1.5-2.5 hours in between cycles, the boiler has to work that much harder when it finally fires back up to get to the point where it can produce steam? I would hate to do the other setting just to have it run forever even more often, but maybe you're on to something and I'll try it out tomorrow when I can babysit it.

The whole reason I got the T87 digital was because the old T87 analog appeared to constantly short cycle and when I adjusted the anticipator to attempt to stop the short cycling (it was set wrong for steam), it then started overshooting the temperature constantly.

Pete_18

pressure gauge

I took it off and tried to blow air in to it to see if this would do anything. Not sure if this should, but when I blew air in to it, it didn't move at all.

Unfortunately our local plumbing supply stores don't carry anything lower than 0-15 gauges.

The thermostat is now set to the hot water setting, we'll see what happens. First cycle was 25 minutes, but it may not have run for a few hours prior so it could have been a fairly cold start. I have the thermostat back down to 64F.

Hitzkup

pressure gauge

try this link: http://www.gaugestore.com/98wikgaug05p1.html

mark sch

Pete_18

thermostat set to hot water / 3 cycle per hour (1-pipe steam)

Outside Temp: 25F, Thermostat Temp: 64F
Thermostat Cycle Setting: Hot Water / 3 cycles per hour

Cycle 1 - 25 minutes 7:34-7:59A

Downtime: 45 Minutes

Cycle 2 - 19 minutes 8:44-9:03A

Downtime: 24 Minutes

Cycle 3 - 10 Minutes 9:27-9:37A

Downtime: 22 Minutes

Cycle 4 - 15 Minutes 9:59-10:14A

I have no idea if this is actually less burner runtime over the 1.5-2.5 period, but with this cycle it took about 8 minutes to get the main full of steam and within 8-12 minutes, all radiators were beginning to heat up. With the 1 cycle per hour setting there was a good 25+ minutes of time for the mains to get warm and the radiators to heat up.

Thanks for the pointer on gaugestore. I will see if my local plumbing supply store can order this unit to save me on shipping and if not, I'll order it from them.

Pete_18

ordered pressure gauge

Thanks, it's on order. I'll let you guys know when it arrives in 3-4 days if I can finally get an actual reading on the pressure.

DaveF

How do you get the darn thing off?

I've been through a lot of what Pete has been through. However, my pro isn't calling back since he is real busy. So, how do you remove the pressuretol?

My Dunkirk has all that stuff neatly arranged on the side of the boiler. It looks like you would have to spin the whole 'trol around to get it off but you can't because it is too close to the boiler. The pigtail is threaded into the side of the gauge glass port so it won't unscrew either.

I'd love to see if pigtail is clogged and replace the 'trol with a 'stat and add a low pressure gauge but I can't get it apart.

Any Ideas?

Pete_18

Oil

Unfortunately I don't know if it's set up to mfg spec because nobody I've had in can find the specs for my boiler. The Riello 3KA burner has 1.0gph nozzle on it, the oil company will not use a bigger nozzle because they said twice in the past when they accidentially used a 1.1gph nozzle, the chamber filled up with soot and the unit was inoperable within a few days.

All of the basement pipes are insulated (mains and radiator runs/ 1 in. insulation on the mains, 1/2 in. on the runs). This made a huge difference since the basement used to be about 80 degrees while the house was suffering.

We had about 30mph winds last night and out of that experience it tells me that I need to go tighten up the windows because way too much cold air is coming through them even with the exterior storms. We unfortunately cannot replace the windows because they're part of the character of the house. does anyone have experience with interior window solutions?

Pete_18

getting the pigtail off

No clue, but if you find out the right way to get a grip on it to get the pigtail off, let me know.

For now I'm holding off on doing anything with it since my new Low Pressure 0-5 psi gauge will arrive on Monday. At least once I replace my 0-30 gauge which even if it did function (which it doesn't appear to), it wouldn't tell me anything useful given its scale, I can then figure out if my pressuretrol actually works or not.

Until then, I've made so much progress on fixing my steam issues over the past few months that I'm now on to dealing with figuring out what to do for interior storm windows since my windows leak cold air like crazy and that is probably costing me significantly more $$ than my inefficient boiler given all of the issues that have been resolved.

I am planning to have the pro come back in a couple of weeks to add two radiators to a section of the house missing radiation, I'm hopeful that my boiler has enough steam capacity since I have no clue what model it is and the boiler company is out of business. Worst case they'll need to remain off until I can afford a new boiler.

Pete_18

pressure gauge reads no pressure

I installed the new 0-5 gauge that arrived today. Interestingly enough, it never moves either. Is it normal for a system to never build up pressure if it has good main(Gorton 2s) and radiator vents (Gorton Cs and Ds)?

I read a lot about systems building too much pressure, what happens as a result of a system just not building pressure? Is this a potential sign of an undersized boiler or one that is just right?

Allan_2

oh, that's nice. I just may order that...

bump this to the top.. this is an interesting discussion