Steam boiler start of season maintenance questions.

Just wanted to give a follow up. So far things are working great. Boiler doesn't seem to be cycling nearly as much as it had been, and I just tried my hand at balancing my radiators and it was really cool to see how this all works in practice after extensive reading and learning.

First thing was to figure out the cold rooms. My house has an enclosed porch and a rear extension, both of which are usually freezing. They also seemed to be lacking heating the most. First I looked at the radiator in the enclosed porch. It was a much newer unit than what the rest of the house has. It's a convector style radiator with thin metal fins. It was getting hot, but I felt like it should be more and that I just assumed the radiator itself was too small considering how cold that room is. I checked the vent. It was a varivalve, and it appeared to be plugged solid. I swapped it out for some home depot vent that I had laying around with no markings on it (bought way before I knew any better) just to see what would happen. Wouldn't you know it, it works great now. It gets quite, quite toasty in that room now and quickly too.

Next I looked at the living room convector, which also has a varivalve. After reading how varivalves vent way too fast, I decided to close this one all the way, instead of wide open like it was before. This is also the room that has the thermostat so no reason to have that radiator heating up too quickly.

Next on the other side (the other main) there's the extension in the back of the house. This radiator always seemed to take forever to get warm. It shares the main with the dining room and the kitchen. In the dining room there is this massive (and probably original with the house) cast iron "baby elephant" radiator. The rest of the radiators in the house are in-wall cast iron convectors, and this is the only old-style radiator in the house. This thing would always get scalding hot like the sun while the kitchen and extension radiators were still cold. Hmm.. what kind of vent is on this one? Maid o mist "C". That's a big vent! I wondered if that it's "stealing" all the steam from the others like seen others mention here.

The extension itself has a varivent which seems to be working properly as in I can blow through it with no restrictions, but didn't seem to be venting anything. As an experiment I removed the vent entirely to see what would happen. A lot of banging and gurgling noises happened, so I reinstalled it. It started venting but only for about 10 seconds or so before snapping shut (and spitting a little water).

I took a little walk the the plumbing supply house and picked up a MOM #4 for the big-boy and a #6 for the extension radiator.

Now this is the part that I found most rewarding. It was very cool to see what a difference the venting makes after reading so much about it. The extension is now the first to get hot, and the behemoth in the dining room is the last, which is how I think it should be. The dining room was always way overheated as it was, but if I need to say, swap it out for a 5 or 6 I can just change the orifices instead of the whole valve, which is nice.

Also I noticed that I haven't had to add any make-up water to the boiler yet, which is something I had to do frequently last year. The water level hasn't budged at all actually.

Next to figure out is the upstairs, which for the most part seems fine but the radiator in the small bedroom seems to take a long time to start producing heat. It also has a varivent which I'm assuming is suspect.

I think I'm "getting" steam heat now. It's definitely not the mystery it was when I first moved into this house. Thanks everyone for the help and education.