Help with recommendation of Gorton steam cast iron radiator vents sizes?

post a picture of your pressuretrol

is the pigtail serviced?

can we see one picture of the controls side of the boiler, all in one

no, we wanna see the Ptrol, siteglass, gage while running, LWCO, all in one,

what pressure do you see when you're making steam?

It looks like the differential on that pressure trol (the white wheel inside) is set too high. "1" should face the front.

I was gonna ask for a closeup on the siteglass, but I see that above, and the 8way also, @ethicalpaul may correct me, but that isn't your best treatment, and may be adding to your wet steam, consider draining the treated water, and refilling with fresh water only,

hard to tell but still looks like you have an oily top of glass, and I don't see that your skim port has been unplugged, nippled, and skimmed, how about a head on close up of that siteglass,

@n1976jmk if you would like to learn how your steam system works, I can recommend the book "we got steam heat! A guide to peaceful coexistence", available from this site.

"we got steam" is the primer read,

"The lost art" is mainly intended for contractors, while "we got steam heat!" Is meant for homeowners. However, "the lost art" is well and clearly written so it will probably be all you need.

The pressuretrol setting with 0.5psi curing and differential wheel set to 1psi theoretically will tell the boiler to turn off if pressure reaches 1.5psi and turn back on after it falls to 0.5psi. If the wheel were at 2psi with the same setting on the slider scale those numbers would be 2.5 and 2.0 respectively. This normally only comes in play if you run a long enough cycle to 100% fill the radiators and it is nice if you are controlling so you don't have to do that much. As pressure rises you are using energy just compressing steam which can be called inefficient. Should be able to run the boiler most of the time less than 0.5psi. If you want to see what your real pressures are add a 0-3psi or 0-5 and make sure your pigtail is clean.

Sounds like you are not having significant balance problems, nevertheless 1st step in balancing is normally making sure your main venting is adequate. That is normally determined by the length and pipe sizes of your steam main/s. With that info and photo of your current main vent we could recommend a main vent size.

As far as radiator venting @Jamie pretty much said it, however, another option to consider is Maid-oMist vents which I and many others have found to be as decent as quality as anything with the advantages of being more economical and having the ability to adjust just with swap out of the orifice caps.

The only true rule on balancing is that every room meets your temperature expectations which may or may not be 100% even. As a homeowner myself I like venting adjustability during and after the balancing endeavor.

I don't have a clear cut recommendation for you. I have all three of those adjustable varieties in my home. I can say that the Ventrite #1 seems to be a very good vent and probably quieter than the others, however, that may be largely in part to the fact that the Ventrite #1 is a relatively slow vent (reference the Gerry Gill table mentioned earlier). I use in on a bedroom radiator I want to vent slowly and it works great. Most of my vents are Hoffman 1a's which were there when I bought the house 23 years ago. The adjustment on the Hoffmans is pretty sloppy. To get them where I want sometimes I have to take the top off and manually position the cap to cover the vent hole as I wish and hod it in place while screwing the top nut back on. They will make a clicking noise if steam and pressure reaches them but for me this is rarely an issue since I rarely get the radiators completely filled. I have replaced a couple of them with MoM vents including a radiator that does fill more often than the others because I purposely vent it faster. They seem to work well and are comparatively economical. I have 13 radiators and haven't had to replace any of the vents in the last 15 years due to failure. Two by choice and two Hoffmans due to failure in the early years when I didn't know squat about my system.