Main vent failure?

Aack08 · January 4

Hi everyone, we replaced our two mains last year that had failed with Gorton No. 2s and our system has been working well, mostly quiet, well balanced, etc. Within the last few days our upstairs radiators are venting a lot more loudly and are now leaking water from the stem valves. This has happened to us before and it resolved when we made a change to a downstairs vent and replaced the mains. I'm having a hard time telling if one of our mains has failed; it makes a slight gurgling sound so my guess is yes but it's less than a year old so I'm stuck between paying $___ (edited to remove specific pricing) for a new one and being wrong about it failing or paying $____ for the steam specialists nearest us to come back up and tell me the problem.

Any advice is much appreciated, thank you so much! (I tried to attach a video for reference of the sound before I realized that's not an option).

dabrakeman · January 4

We need to find out why you are getting water up into your main which is likely the cause of your vent failure, that or too much pressure. Start by taking some photos of your boiler from distance at multiple angles. Also include a photo of your pressuretrol and your main vent placement.

Aack08 · January 4

Thank you, here are a few, if different angles will be better I will be happy to re-take these (the pressuretrol and PSI pictures were taken while the system was running).

Also for context I forgot to mention our boiler is brand-new as of March 2024 if that helps at all.

PSI.jpg

dabrakeman · January 5

Piping actually looks good.

Do you see any surging in the site glass when the boiler is steaming, more than a half inch or so? How much skimming do you recall doing or having done when the boiler was installed?

109A_5 · January 5

What is this valve for ? Is it closed ? I probably would have put the main vents up a bit vertically.

ethicalpaul · January 5

Skim tapping. Closed and capped.

109A_5 · January 5

@ethicalpaul Ah yes, thanks, its an oil burner. Camera angle got me, when I first saw it I thought it was Teed into the wet return.

Aack08 · January 5

Thank you all for looking at this!

We do skim the boiler about once a week and we try to flush it every few weeks, we do get a lot of gunk through the system but when we got the new boiler they also replaced a lot of the basement pipes which has helped a little bit.

For the sight glass, I haven't noticed much, if any surging, but to be honest I didn't check this specifically yesterday so I will need to confirm that when I get home from work.

Aack08 · January 6

My husband just went down to skim the boiler again to see if it would help since it's pushing pretty strong in our upstairs radiators, says the sight glass water is moving right around the half inch mark or so

ethicalpaul · January 6

half inch from the bottom? Or it's moving about 1/2 inch? The former is bad, the latter is good.

You don't need to skim regularly, in fact it will decrease the life of your boiler.

Same for flushing, quit doing that.

Aack08 · 1:26AM

Oops, moving about 1/2 inch, we make sure water stays between the min/max lines on our sight-glass so not 1/2 inch from the bottom. And thank you for the advice on how much I'm skimming/flushing, we never used to skim our old boiler, we just thought now with the new one that was supposed to be a regular thing so this is helpful. I thought flushing the built up gunk out of the bottom regularly was supposed to help with properly heating the boiler water so we'll make sure to adjust our practices here.

109A_5 · 1:52AM

Skimming is only to remove the manufacturing oil (boiler and piping) from the boiler, once that is complete (oils completely removed) you may never have to skim again. Flushing maybe 1 or 2 times a year, once the contamination is minimized from the new boiler install.

Main vent failure?

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