Near boiler piping

Why are you replacing your recent work? If your header is the required distance from the water line, your piping follows the manufacturer's recommendations and the system is working well, you'll be spending much time and money and adding additional supply pipe friction quite unnecessarily.

A drop header is generally used when you lack the overhead clearance to place the header the required height from the water line.

You can certainly pipe a 3" or 4" header, but you may not achieve any added benefit from it. Again, how is the system operating and what improvement do you seek?

Why not post a photo here and see what recommendations you get? And do tell us more about the system.

I had that same boiler and was able to get the water quality good enough that it didn't surge despite a very horrible near boiler piping. You don't need a drop header. Like everyone is saying, send some pics

Yeah a quart is about 8 times more than you'd ever want to think about putting in that boiler.

8 way by itself doesn't cause surging, even too much (I have proven it) but if you add it to dirty water or a boiler with a lot of sediment/scale, it can most definitely cause it as I also experienced.

You can keep it out but in my experience, here's the best way:

1. Add 4-6 ounces of 8-way.
2. Let the boiler run and watch the water level
3. If the water level dives, that is surging due to the 8-way freeing up rust and "mud" (which is also rust, but more like silty rust).
4. Drain a decent amount of water, possibly all of it (as you said, your boiler is quite small and it's not hard to drain).
5. Refill it and go back to step one.

Now these steps might take several days, or they might happen immediately. Soon though, less and less "stuff" will get freed by the 8-way and the boiler won't be surging anymore and you will have a nice maintenance amount of 8-way in the boiler. The water will be clear with a purple tint. The corrosion under the water line will nearly cease and "mud"/brown water production will stop.

At this point, don't drain any more, and minimize leaks in order to minimize the introduction of fresh water. Once per year you can drain a little bit until clear but it will probably be less than 1/2 gallon, and that's a Good Thing

Edit: and yes if it needs skimming due to oils on the water, that needs to happen before all of these steps

Headers need no pitch it just makes thing more difficult and looks stupid. You can use a drop header if you want but no one has ever proven that if the NBP is done in accordance with the MFG requirements that it won't work.

You said 30' of steam header, I think you mean "main".

How cold is the crawl space? It's probably good to insulate it. If you have banging there I would suspect a low spot that is collecting water.

You said the outlets of the boiler were 2". Are you sure there is not a reducing bushing in the boiler outlet? This is a common cheat as 2 1/2" fittings/piping is much more expensive. Plus few tradesman can thread 2 1/2".

If you are using both outlets that is a plus. Removing those bushings can be a bear to deal with.

that’s good observation. Get good 1” insulation be aware it doesn’t heat the pipe it only slows the cooling.

If you look up heat loss from insulated pipe you'll find minimal difference between the losses with 1" insulation and losses with 2" insulation.

Have you considered posting photos of your boiler header piping so we can try to diagnose this?

Anyone see deficiencies in this boiler piping?

Hard to skim it………….😁

If you read through this thread:

Sizing

EdtheHeaterMan explains how to measure your radiators and read your boiler size. This will tell you if your boiler is undersized or oversized. This information is very important in evaluating system performance.

Clean that slop out of the boiler until the water is clear. Skim it until the oil's gone, change it, until it's clear. The disappearing water level may be caused by dirty water. It's certainly not clean in the photo.

I see where one steam main starts at the boiler header. Where does the second steam main start? How long are these steam mains?

Where can I get those Russian submarine valves?

Were there any issues before you had someone come in and do the work you have mentioned? Seems like everything you are mentioning started happening after they were there.

When the boiler starts up, the level will get close to the low water cut off, and sometimes trip it.

I missed this part before. That's not turbulent, what that is, is water is getting thrown out of your boiler up into your main pipes. It's called "surging" and it's not good. You want your water level to move only an inch or so maximum during steam production.