Condensate pump leaking steam

Throw away traps on condensate tank. Get yourself a book on steam heating. Read it. I mean, you took up the task to work on the problem you know nothing about, and instead of educating yourself, you are asking DIYselfer question here. That’s not fair to your clients.

Take a breath, and slow down. We have all been there we all started somewhere. Buying a booknis a great place to start. Asking the internet is kind of like playing russian roulette, being as you dont know, you arent going to know if you are getting good or bad advice. I was in your situation about 5 years ago when i took over a plant with 3 high pressure steam generators fresh out of my apprenticeship. Dan Holohan has 2 books you are going to want to get. "The Lost Art of Steam Heating" (a red cover) and "The Lost Art of Steam Heating Companion" (a blue cover) both are great books and Mr. Holohan has an amazing way of explaining things that us techs can understand without an engineering degree. Is this building a vacuum return building and if yes do you have vacuum? I like you are pretty green on this but in my limited experiance which was similar to your situation I had a plant with hoses run all over the place from the strainers because they would just blow the strainers whenever there was hammer, it turned out, among the many many many other problems, they were running the recievers in float only and running about 5psi from the reducing stations. I changed to units to vacuum/float and reduced the reducing station pressure to 1.5-3 psi and eliminated ALOT of issues. Do you have more than 1 reciever in your building? In my plant i have multiple recievers which run vacuum and they all pump back to a main surge tank/ condensate receiver that operates as the feed tank, operating as a condensate receiver for the graviry return for the building it is in, the make-up water surge tank for the system and a receiver for all the other tanks to pump to before it is fed t ok a d.a. tank/feedwater preheater before the steam generators. My system is a bit more complex than what you have but it sounds like some of the same issues. As for the pumps leaking steam your return is too hot and your seals are blown, rebuild your pumps or send them in, and check and replace/ rebuild ALL the traps in the building. The bad traps getting fixed will fix MOST of the issues you are having. As for the controls, find an original schematic or print or manual, compair to what you have and put it back the way it should be, replace components that are bad and make sure it works the way it was designed. Also check your pressure gausges themselves, i have run into issues with hammer and stuff where i was chasing my tail looking for a bad trap or valve and it turned out to be a bad guage telling me i had enough pressure when really I didn't have any or had way too much.

Good luck brother, take a breath, and take it one issue at a time. And dont rely on the internet, for every guy with a sincere answer and the experiences to back it up, there are a hundred guys with bad advise that think they know what to do and are a maricle to not have blown themselves and other up, or guys just wanting to be jerks and give bad advise on purpose.

Just a shot at a your problem.
\
Are these traps float and thermostatic traps? If they are replace the thermostatic element and check the float assembly and seat.

These traps need only a 1/4 pound of pressure differential to work .

At the juncture where the steam traps are it looks like you have a T where two condensate lines connect to each other. If that is the case each condensate line must connect separately to the individual steam trap to prevent steam from crossing into each return.

Check the bypass isolation valve to see if is open or defective.

Repair the pumps by replacing the seals as this continued leakage may cause the pumps to freeze when the next heating seasons arrives.


Jake