Steam boilers that are piped wrong

And some install pics from this site.

We see poor installs often. I question how a horribly piped boiler or system can sometimes last thirty, forty or even fifty years. I am not talking about antique boilers that were converted from coal to oil to gas. I am talking about relatively modern boilers manufactured in the last fifty years. I have also seen boilers piped near perfectly last as little as nine years. I think a lot of it depends on the boiler design, the water quality and maintenance.

Show the customer how you plan to pipe the boiler and why it is important. Also, let them know the system will perform better when your done, and why. Do not pick on the last guy.

Many of the old time boilers just came up out of the boiler into the supply pipe with no header. If they had two supplies and had two tapping's the boiler was the header.

The newer boilers hold less water and a smaller steam to water disengaging area=more velocity. You need the header to slow things down to separate the steam and water

Sure. The purpose of the header is to separate water from the steam so that water doesn't get "carried over" into the rest of your system, like all the way up to the radiators (which can indeed happen). It's desirable for only steam to travel up into your main pipe (the horizontal large pipes that travel around your basement ceiling).

That's the theory, and the way all the manufacturers say to install it, and also the way they should all be installed.

But in this world there are a myriad of steam boilers installed right now that have been running problem-free for decades that have no header at all (just like yours in your photo in the original post above).

This is because if the water is relatively clean, with little or no oil or other stuff in it, the water will boil "cleanly" without foaming and without "throwing" a bunch of water up into the supply pipe and into your main.

When I say I proved it, it's because I have sight glasses (sections of pipe made of glass) in the supply pipes that exit my boiler and travel to the header. So I can see that when my water is "normal" and "clean", there is nothing at all but steam traveling above my boiler (which is a modern Peerless 63). You can see videos of this by following my link in my signature at the bottom of all my posts.

If that boiler is running without the water level in the gauge glass dropping more than an inch or two, it is almost surely not throwing any water up into the main. But if you're trying to convince a customer that they should have a correctly-piped boiler, you are right, but if I were a customer with a boiler that seemed to be working great, I wouldn't really want to spend a bunch of money re-piping it…but I could be convinced that when the boiler is replaced it should be repiped according to industry and manufacturer specifications.