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Steam Heat

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frank_25
frank_25 Member Posts: 202
in THE MAIN WALL

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  • Mark_69
    Mark_69 Member Posts: 8
    steam heat troubles

    Last August we moved into an older house that has a base board steam heat system. Throughout the winter our heating bills were huge as it seemed like our boiler ran a lot to try to warm things up although our upstairs remained significantly colder than the downstairs. The house is about 2900 sf with the boiler in the basement and our bedrooms on the 2nd floor. We had a contractor look at and clean/do maintenance on the system and he found two or three defective traps and replaced them, but still no luck. If you crank the t-stat up to 90 the place heats up pretty well, but if you set it at 72 our bedrooms remain in the low 60's and we still used 350-500 therms a month last month. I am getting quotes to add more insulation into our attic (we also replaced the windows before we moved in), but am still looking for advice on how to handle the boiler/steam system. Is there a way to maintain a comfortable temperature without breaking the bank on the power bill? Any tips/information would be appreciated. Thank you.
  • garret_7
    garret_7 Member Posts: 6


    Post some pics and details of your system, and I'm sure folks around here will help you figure out what you can do to improve the system...

    Some questions... How old is the boiler? Two pipe or one-pipe steam?

    I'm a homeowner too, and I just replaced our 80 year old boiler with a shiny new one... this site (and Dan's books) are the best. I highly recommend "We Got Steam Heat" as a basic book for homeowners... though I geeked out and couldn't resist The Lost Art as well.

    If the rads aren't heating evenly (i.e, downstairs gets hot quicker than upstairs), it might be a venting problem. Or your boiler could be undersized... or any number of things. Post some pics and details and I'm sure you'll get some good guidance.


    -Garret
  • Mike T., Swampeast MO
    Mike T., Swampeast MO Member Posts: 6,928


    Surely you didn't use 350 therms last month... If so where are you above the arctic circle or deep in the southern Hemisphere?

    I HIGHLY suggest you buy the books "So We've Got Steam Heat" and "The Lost Art of Steam Heating" by Dan Holohan (the owner of this site) available here at "Books and More".

    Study well. Depending on your available time and skills, there is much that a homeowner can do to get and CERTAINLY keep their steam system in top-notch condition. At an utter minimum, you'll be able to identify truly knowledgeable steam men.
  • ttekushan_3
    ttekushan_3 Member Posts: 964
    Base boards

    My first thought is that the baseboards are a retrofit to eliminate the radiators. Now, this required the baseboard installers to reengineer parts of the system. Sounds like trouble to me. I am currently unbungling such a system.

    Really, its not that hard to correct problems like this. The hard part is knowing what you are looking at and why its acting the way it is. Okay, maybe it is hard. But with Dan's books and a little help from around here, you might find some amazingly simple but bone-headed mistakes that were made on this system. And hoooo-boy can a few bungles destroy the effectiveness and efficiency of a steam heating system!

    Digression:

    The current job I'm working on has baseray-baseboards-in-the -bay window. Angles are 22 1/2 degrees. So the installer used copper to connect the baserays and apparently bent the copper lines over a saw horse. Kinks at every bend. I kid you not. The main complaint was that everything leaked around there. The second complaint was that they had very little heat. So here we have a single pipe system that was partially converted to two-pipe, and with other baseboards drained on the same line into ONE steam trap. The vents are still on the baseboards. So this bay window setup with the kinks is slooow to begin with then the other baseboard exit steam right past that single trap up into the return of the bay set-up, closing the Hoffman 1A. The whole thing in the front of the house would bottle up, with poor heating as a result. Oh and the pressure was up to 7 lbs to rectify the problem. And its been like this for 30 years!

    Truly, I love jobs like this. Take a few things apart, reassemble properly, re-plumb a few returns, balance the vents, clean and adjust. Then I'm a hero. Don't even have to take the cape out the phone booth.

    -Terry

    Terry T

    steam; proportioned minitube; trapless; jet pump return; vac vent. New Yorker CGS30C

  • Mark_69
    Mark_69 Member Posts: 8


    Garret,

    Thanks for the reply. I will work on some pics. The system is a two pipe and I think the boiler is fairly new (10 years??). When you say "venting" problem, do you mean the return lines from the radiators to the boiler or venting of the actual boiler?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    the books...

    Get the books, get the books, get the books from this site, I get no commission for saying this....
  • garret_7
    garret_7 Member Posts: 6



    By venting, I mean the air vents you should have on the ends of your steam mains and dry return. With two-pipe steam, there are no vents on the radiators, so they'll be in the basement.

    If your venting is poor, steam will have a hard time getting through the system, especially into the furthest away radiators (since there's more air to displace to get there).

    Here's a Steam Heating Primer Dan Holohan wrote... it's a quick introduction to the stuff you'll find in We Got Steam Heat and The Lost Art.

    http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=54

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