Help in Northern Michigan

Betsy_4

Steve, yep it's gas fired and the bills are pretty steep so we thought just getting things tuned some might help. We do have some leaking air vents, one room with no heat but it could be that the shut-offs are completely off but since we can't budge them at all it's hard to say. Some leaking at a few valves (repacking?) We have a little bit of banging, but not much to complain about. Discovered a small hole in (little bigger than a pin size) one radiator that half up and in one of the middle sections. We have 15 radiators in the house, 2 are one pipe, the rest are 2 pipe and one that is a big wall unit with no shut-offs but has an air vent. Also one of the bathrooms only seems to get heat first thing in the morning. My family is so tired of me telling them to put on another sweater when they complain how cold it is. I'm sure it can't help either that we have extremely hard water here, something that has increased in the past few years due to different wells the city hooked to.

Betsy_4

pictures

I aksed a while back about finding steam help in Petoskey (north of Traverse City) anyway it took a while to get some pictures but thanks to the younger generation here they are. Most of our radiators look just like this with 2 shut-offs, not sure of the purpose for that. Most of the handles are stuck and will not turn at all. Any suggestions, don't want to break any pipes. We also have 2 radiators that were replaced before we got the house with just one pipe to them. Just learned from the We got steam heat that it needs to be completely open or closed. One of these steams up the room like crazy there doesn't appear to be any kind of trap on it. Any suggestions or info on these issues would be great. I feel like I know just enough to be dangerous so am afraid to do anything. Also enclosed picture of piping around the boiler because someone (sorry I don't remeber who) asked for it. Also noticed we have rusty looking sediment in the site glass even after opening the blow-off(?) valve.

John R. Hall

Steve Ebels

Sounds like a job for Steve who has a business near Cadillac. Maybe he'll see this post.

Steve Ebels_3

Betsy

It was me that asked for the pictures. You had some more in your previous post but I didn't get a chance to study them very closely. If you could get them up here again I'll take a look and see if I can get a sense for what may or may not have to be done.

Are you having any problems in particular that prompt your call for help? Banging, rooms not heating, vents spitting or the like? I'm just looking for clues as to what kind work will be involved in getting the old girl tuned up. I'm assuming that the boiler is gas fired........? How many radiators are in the house? Can you tell what pressure your controls are set at?

Thanks

Steamhead (in transit)

That's a 2-pipe, air-vent system

the "missing link" between one-pipe and Vapor. It was state-of-the-art in its day but Vapor made it obsolete in the early 1900s.

I'd start by getting the basics right- venting, insulation etc.

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Betsy_4

There's 15 radiators, one is a gigantic wall thing in the front entryway with no shut-offs just an air vent. we have some leaking air vents, one room with no heat but it could be that it's completely closed because the shut-offs won't budge, also just discovered a tiny hole in one of the radiators- half way up in about the middle section. Only a little banging

Betsy_4

Thanks for that tidbit. Hopefully there's some info about that in Dan's books. I better get reading.