Single Pipe Steam Heat- Pipe Banging

Bigden · January 17

For some reason, my pipes started banging in the walls. They seem to be sloped properly and the main valve works and on all the radiators as well. I did have a section of overflow return replaced. What is the best remedy to cure the banging, bleeding the boiler, drain the whole system?

leonz · January 17

If you have a long bubble level place it under the long basement header pipes and then check to see if the header pipe is sagging causing a droop that can collect water vapor over time.

Bigden · January 17

If that is sagging, It needs to be properly pitched I assume, is there anything I can do besides pitching?

ethicalpaul · January 17

I don't know what "overflow return" is but if you added new pipe to your system, the oils could be causing your system to surge. Watch the water level during a call for heat and see if it drops more than 1/2" or so. If so you'll need to skim your boiler, or if that's not possible you could try Squick which actually does work to bind to the oil and let it fall to the bottom of the boiler.

Bigden · January 17

ok, I have skimmed it a couple times.. pencil thickness drip brown till it turned clear. Then drained the boiler from the lowest part of the piping to the middle of the water level on the sight glass. Do you think a system flush or some type of boiler bleed would work?

ethicalpaul · January 17

So you skimmed it and then still experienced surging? Did it take a few days to return?

If so I have seen this. What happens is when surging occurs, the oils are distributed all through the main and near boiler piping.

Then you skim but a lot of the oil is still up in the system, not in the boiler.

Then a few days later, the oils have recollected in the boiler, and it surges, again spewing the oil all throughout the system.

So what you have to do is to pro-actively skim again a couple days after your first skim but hopefully before your boiler surges again.

You might have to repeat this. If you do a skim after a couple days and see zero sheen or oil coming out then you might have gotten all the oil out.

Bigden · January 17

Do you think that this will fix the water hammering?

ethicalpaul · January 17

If the hammering is due to surging (I don't know if we know that yet from where we are sitting), then it should especially as you said it wasn't surging before this change (I think you said that anyway)

neilc · January 17

post a couple pictures,

where you think the hammering is being fed from in the basement, and a general shot of the boiler,

what pressures are you seeing? has the pigtail been serviced?

Bigden · January 24

Hello, let me update the situation and also do some clarification. I adjusted the slope one of the return pipes so it slopes more, the one I think was banging, and I drained the boiler and pipes as much as I could. Seemed to remedy the situation. Then my wife and I "corrected" the pitch, bc at the bend, further away from the boiler, had a reverse pitch due to me creating the extreme pitch, which I tried to get any left over condensate back to the boiler or out of the pipes. However, the banging came back! We tried insulating some of the outgoing pipes, but didnt work. Do the pipes need to be flushed? Is this something I can do? I tried to post a couple videos, but the files were too big. If you want to see them, let me know and I will email them..

neilc · January 24

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1835741#Comment_1835741

so what's that boiler look like ?

Single Pipe Steam Heat- Pipe Banging

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