venting the mains

eburke_46

The mains have drips with smaller pipes running parallel back to the boiler, and yes, eventually those pipes go from dry return to wet. So what your saying is move the vents away from the boiler room and put at the end of the main for better efficiency?

eburke_45

venting

Neighbor was having a new steam boiler installed. I was walking by with the dog. Tech was out by his truck so I wanted to ask him about venting the mains. My main vents are at the elbow of the dry return and the neighbor's set up is similar. I asked about moving the main vents to the end of the main instead of the dry return, but he said they should be at the dry return. This is a one pipe with drips to the dry return. He felt that if the vents were at the end of the main the steam would stop once the main vents shut. From what I read out here the school of thought seems to be that venting at the return els only pushes steam back to through the dry returns instead of the mains. Any thoughts on this? Right now I have two gorton #2's on each return about eight inches above the el.

Pete_24

What are you calling the dry return? Doesn't the main become a wet return as soon as it drops down below the water line?

I would vent at the end of the steam main before it drops, otherwise you're forced to vent more air out for no reason.

Either way, doing what you and your neighbor are doing isn't the end of the world, just gives you more air to vent which may be unnecessary.