System overpressurizing

Aack08 · February 2

I live on this wall now (previous posts here and here for reference if needed) :(

Short-ish version: started having issues a few weeks ago (upstairs radiators venting louder than norm, stem valves starting to spurt water) and found we had a loose nut on one radiator connecting it to the pipe (tightened, resolved) and then also found we had a radiator that had a hole/crack (replaced, resolved).

Continued to have the initial problems mentioned here, but getting worse (air vents on our steam baseboards rattling louder, one leaking water now, almost all stem valves now leaking or spurting/gurgling water, particularly two of our upstairs ones which are the loudest). We have two Gorton No. 2s as mains in our basement, bought/installed them late April '25. Everything was working like a dream until a few weeks ago. Bought a new Gorton No. 2 thinking the mains had failed, tried replacing each of the others with the new one, no improvement, so put the "originals" back in place (this was Saturday, two days ago). Woke up Sunday morning very cold upstairs (but still getting a small amount of heat to some radiators and lots of the gurgling valves on two of them still), so I figured either a) the heat failed (hopefully not, the boiler was replaced in March '24) or b) there was too much pressure and it wasn't making it upstairs. Checked the boiler and pressure, pressure indeed was rising too high (we've never run into this before) and the pressuretrol would cut the system out.

Called our heat company, they didn't know what was causing this so they did their system maintenance/annual cleaning (cleaning out the parts, making sure nothing was clogged, etc.).

They suggested Ventrite mains instead and I was able to find some #35s at a local supplier today, but I asked about why the pressuretrol's not cutting out when it's supposed to and they didn't know, so they're going to replace it this week.

My biggest concern and aggravation right now is that I seem to be missing something/I can't figure out what's causing the overpressurization in the first place now that we've tried replacing the mains (in fairness, as of writing this I only replaced one of the Gorton's with a ventrite because I can't get the adapter on the other Gorton out so just replaced that stuck one with the new Gorton No 2 we bought a few weeks ago). One person said maybe all of the stem valves need to be replaced but they were functioning completely fine before and I can't understand why they'd all suddenly start having the same problem at the same time if that was the case.

We've put in a help request with another company that does specialize in steam but they're a few states away and only come up this way based on how many customers they have in need in the area so it could be a month or two (based on the last time I scheduled with them) before they come this way again.

I am despondent here that I am hemorrhaging money on these service calls and parts and no one who has been to the house seems to know what the actual problem is. If anyone has anything else for me to check I am all ears, I've read "We've Got Steam" a few times and have been deep diving this forum and other sites for more information but am at a loss.

Thank you in advance!

Jamie Hall · February 2

Fussing with vents won't do anything to help with excess pressure.

What will, though, is whether the pigtail from the boiler to your pressuretrol is clear. I realise you just had some mainentance, but did they take the pressuretrol off the pigtail and ensure that the pigtail was clear into the boiler?

That would be the first place I'd look…

Aack08 · February 2

I am almost positive they did, I remember them saying they wanted to make sure it wasn't clogged but I don't remember if they specifically mentioned the pigtail so I will double check with them when the return to replace the pressuretrol (they will hopefully be here Wednesday again).

pedmec · February 2

What's the water level in the boiler look like?

patrykrebisz · February 2

Those pressuretrols are badly calibrated often straight from the factory. This video will help you calibrated yours (don't mind sensationalizing title):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCe_G7aRTN0

You MUST get yourself low pressure gauge (0-5psi) to really know what is ACTUALLY going on in your system. At 3psi (assuming your 0-30psi gauge is correct) you should be hearing whistling of your radiator vents as if they were the Orient Express.

ethicalpaul · February 2

they’re firing the parts cannon for sure

dabrakeman · February 3

Ridiculous suggestion to replace the Gorton#2's with Ventrites. Absolute waste of money. You can verify if your Gortons are working or not. If they aren't leaking steam then they are closing OK. To verify that they are not stuck closed just unscrew it and while holding it upright blow in from the bottom to make sure it vents.

As suggested above first make sure the pigtail is clean. Second get the low pressure gage put in so you can see actual pressure. I would go ahead after assuring the pigtail is clean setting that pressuretrol at 1.5psi with a 0.5 diff.

Also, lots of things will happen at 2psi that just don't happen at a normal 0.25psi or less operating pressure. The extreme cold may be forcing you into higher pressures more than anything else. If it extremely cold eliminate your setbacks and depending upon what you have for a thermostat make sure you allow at least 2 cycles per hour or if swing controlled go to +/-0.5degree instead of +/-1deg.

Aack08 · February 3

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1885898#Comment_1885898

We kept having to refill, we were losing several inches of water each day because we had one Gorton stuck open just spewing steam plust he water we were losing at the stem valves, so we've been refilling it to the top line marked on our sight glass as necessary.

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1885900#Comment_1885900

Thank you for this! I'm going to check this out after work today (and great advice on the different pressure gauge, I will research where to get one and how to install/if we need to have someone install it). And you are absolutely right, the vents on our rads were very loud which was one of the signs I knew something was up.

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1885968#Comment_1885968

I really appreciate this too, thank you. I had the same reaction about the ventrites because we were previously recommended to get Gortons.

But the unexpected plot twist here is that as of replacing the remaining Gorton last night with the other ventrite (so now we have two ventrite mains on instead of two Gortons or one Gorton and one ventrite), the system is running like a dream again. Ran 3-4 cycles before we went to bed, vents are quiet again, and my husband sat in the basement to watch the pressure gauge and it remained at 0. Woke up to a lovely mostly evenly heated house (I've been making small adjustments to the rad vents again to get everything rebalanced). You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Regarding the question of the Gortons having failed or not, I do know we clearly had one Gorton that had failed as it was actively spewing so much steam throughout the cycles. The other ones feel like they're getting stuck closed (would take them off and you wouldn't get that jangling when you turn them upside/couldn't blow through them easily anymore). So now, unfortunately, of the 4 Gortons I have bought in the last two years, we've either been very unlucky or something in our system is causing them all to fail (one came faulty last year and I exchanged it out of the box, the other two are the ones we've had on since April, and then the 4th one is the one I bought last month that we had on until we could get the ventrites in). I have a big mouth and another gorton I had ordered coming in tomorrow but now that the ventrites are working and we seem to have a functional system again I'm planning to return at least the Gorton because we've had such unfortunate luck with them, though debating to keep the big mouth as a backup or not.

Captain Who · February 3

https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/Balancing-Steam-Systems-Using-a-Vent-Capacity-Chart-1.pdf

Ventrite #35 is a super slow main vent, compared to Gorton #2 and even Gorton #1. Maybe they aren't even closing before the tstat is satisfied and that is why you are not operating under any pressure that shows up on the gauge you have as something above 0. That is probably hiding problems at the expense of a larger gas bill. Until you find out why this is the case, at least you have heat everywhere.

dabrakeman · February 3

Where again are you located? What overnight outdoor temperatures were you seeing last night vs previous nights? I am not doubting that you have gotten some bad Gorton valves. Many have and many have been able to get them replaced free of charge. I will tell you the faster venting of the Gorton's if they are working will not be the cause of your system functioning poorly relative to the Ventrites. You are just going to be burning more fuel with the Ventrites. Your system undoubtedly will behave differently if it is zero degrees outside vs if it is 15f or 20f.

Aack08 · February 6

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1885980#Comment_1885980

Thank you for this, I want to find/use an efficient vent like the Gortons (we loved them for the first few months they were working!), it's just until I figure out what's causing these problems it's been tough to keep paying for new Gortons over and over again.

That's also interesting about them not closing until the tstat is satisfied, I did notice when I was listening to them the other night that they're still releasing air at the end of the cycle, but if the Gortons are getting stuck open or closed I'm just not sure what my next step is or if there's a happy medium :(.

The other thing that I've been seeing in my reading/research is that I think our mains may be placed in spots that aren't ideal (they're not far enough away from the mains based on what I'm seeing) so I need to see if I can raise them off the pipes more. I don't know if the pipes are shooting too much debris into them and causing the repeated problems or if it really is just dud vents we've been getting, though we lived in the house for 3.5 years before our old boiler failed and then we started running into these issues with the new boiler (which was sized based on our radiators).

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1885984#Comment_1885984

Fair question, I'm in NH so we've absolutely been feeling that cold snap that came through the last week or two, but we were also having these problems when we were having "typical" winter days in late December/early January, and our system also ran just fine when we had some tougher cold snaps a few years ago.

dabrakeman · February 6

IF you are still getting water carryover into the main from your new boiler then that could fail the vents. Certainly would protect them better if they could be raised up. Perhaps a faster vent is more sensitive to the carryover, not sure but logically I could see it.

Captain Who · February 6

I read your other two previous posts and IIRC you mentioned that the new boiler was installed Mar 2024, and they also replaced some pipes. That's pretty key information that needs to be given in detail regarding what they did to the pipes.

"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."

Aack08 · February 7

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1886531#Comment_1886531

Hi, I went back through old photos from when we did the replacement and before, as well as our inspection report from when we bought the house but can't find much in the way of old pictures unfortunately (and of course, hindsight being 20/20, had I know we'd being having issues in the future I'd have measured the pipes, taken better pictures, etc.)

What I can say is I know they replaced some of our copper piping with black iron. The only specifics I have, though, is this screenshot:

And these are the only "before" pictures I have:

Vs. our "after" pictures (these are recent since they're from that other post):

I do see that on the new system there are two pipes coming out of/into the top of the boiler vs. the one that split off in our old boiler. We did have a steam-specializing company come out last year when we were having issues and they seemed happy with the way the piping was done, I think they mentioned the Hartfood loop was slightly lower or higher than they'd typically do but they didn't seem concerned about it.

The last day or two I've noticed the upstairs vents have started getting louder again, and this morning one of the stem valves started gurgling/spitting again, so the vent replacement was just a temporary fix. We do have someone coming out tomorrow to replace our pressuretrol so I'm going to ask them to double check the pigtail to make sure it was, indeed, cleaned out last week when they did the "annual maintenance."

Captain Who · February 7

I'm thinking that they were referring to the near boiler piping. If they had replaced your mains and returns you would've known it, especially the $$$ part.

Aack08 · February 8

Oh Yes absolutely, I didn't see new piping for the full basement, just the near boiler as far as I can tell.

leaking · February 8

get new gauges, one. 0 -4 lb. Your pressure is way high. Now, just lower pressure to 0.5 and see what happens, see if you heat. The pressuretrol is set to 2 but gauge shows 3. That’s way high. Gauge should be under 2, try for 1.5 , if vents blow water lower pressure more and see what happens. How do you know system is not overfilled ? Are pipes to glass cleaned ? . I did not see a photo of sight glass and controls close up . See if lowering water level as well as lower pressure help . You only need as much pressure to get heat everywhere. I would get it as low as possible with proper heat.

leaking · February 8

Also my presssuretrol only goes to maybe 3 lb, yours goes to 8, you don’t have as much low control . Try it at 0.5lb and see what happens . Maybe it’s inaccurate. Was it removed and cleaned? Did you look at the gauge and see if crap is inside ??? Stop with the Vents . That pressure gauge is for Hot water heat . Get a 0 - 3 lb , then you will better control and know real pressure .

Captain Who · February 8

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1886810#Comment_1886810

If you've been following along, the pressuretrol is suspect and is being replaced tomorrow.

Aack08 · February 19

Hi all, I'm overdue for an update:

Pressuretrol had indeed failed and was replaced, keeping in mind though that the goal was ultimately to figure out what was causing the over-pressurization in the first place.

Short version of what we've found so far is that the only thing that has helped us relieve the pressure problem has been replacing faulty/failed vents. In addition to the main vents failing so quickly, we also found a newly failed rad vent (it was about a week old, brand new out of the box), and upon replacing that vent the pressure problem went away again. Our heat company ended up adding some sort of solution to the system to "scrub" out old debris from the system and reflushed the boiler a few days later because nothing else was found to be faulty or out of whack.

Happy to report we have had 0 problems since and hoping that now that there is less gunk/residue/whatever it may have been flying through the system and clogging up/causing vents to fail that we may be okay for a while.

System overpressurizing

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