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Questions regarding Two pipes Steam in 7 floors building in Argentina

fhc_ne
fhc_ne Member Posts: 1

Hi!, I live in the 7th floor of a 7 floor building.
The building has a two pipes steam heating installation.
I'm remodeling my flat and I want to apply some changes that involve taking out a radiator and maybe rotating the position of other radiators.
I read We Got Steam and tried to learn about how the steam works but there are a couple of questions that I'm not clear about.

Attached is the building heating pipes blueprint.

risers.png



My questions:
I see that for each riser there is a vent on the roof, I'm not clear about this as in all examples I see the vents are in the basement. I also see vapor coming out often from those vents (not constantly, but in total it's almost half of the time the boiler is turned on.

In several rooms the steam pipes do a loop going over the radiator, I'm not sure if this has a reason or it's just because the installer wanted the radiator connections to face a specific way.

radiator kitchen.jpg radiator living.jpg



I have to remove a wall and want to remove a small radiator from that wall, my idea would be to close the pipes and disable that circuit, but I'm still not sure if that's allright or if in some way I would disable the radiators of that riser for all floors. Is there any situation in which taking out this radiator and blocking the pipes the whole line would not work for all the other floors?. In the blueprint it's this one:

blueprintzoom.png



radiator2.jpg

Thanks for any help you can provide, I asked "experts" in my city but I'm not sure I trust what they are anwering me as I had answers that said that I couldn't close those pipes and other that said that it was ok, none of them explained exactly why.

Mad Dog_2

Comments

  • ScottSecor
    ScottSecor Member Posts: 987

    Your radiator looks like it may be piped like radiator 12/61 not radiator 6/61 as you indicated. If I am correct, I do not see a problem with capping off the supply and the return.

    On the other hand, the supply pipe for radiator 6/61 could only be capped off above the tee shown in the drawing. If you were to cap off the entire horizontal pipe, you would not allow steam to reach radiator 7/46.

    In other words, you do not want to cap off a shared steam supply or a shared steam return.

    Mad Dog_2fhc_ne
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 26,064

    and the vents on the roof are fine — in fact, tall risers like that should be vented. The fact that you can see vapour from them from time to time probably means that they aren't working properly, however — and suggests that the system pressure is higher than it needs to be. Neither of those things are your problem, though!

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    fhc_ne