Gorton vents is there a way to test them?

Thanks for the info. I have both TSP and washing soda. Yes, that initial water was black as coal, hadn't seen water ever look like that. I suspect it's not clean yet, despite 4 skimmings. The manual mentions using a "recommended boil-out compound" to clean the boiler, but nowhere do they tell you what that mythical stuff is. I even called them, pretending to be a contractor, and they can't or won't provide that information. So why put that in the manual?

Perhaps not surprisingly these days, this Installation, Operating and Service manual doesn't tell you the fill capacity either. It only tells you the dimension of the normal fill line from the base of the unit. That's it. I just went through all the manuals, page by page, and there's no mention of water capacity! Maybe it is online, but I haven't tried that. I'll go do that now. Not available, that I can find. Weird. Make everyone reinvent the wheel when the factory obviously knows this…

Sorry about the pictures. Reused all the old piping, but I will be able to take pics in a week.

Thank you for the answer regarding the water capacity. What year manual are you quoting? I see it in the 2024 manual available online. Didn't see it in the 2021 manual that came with the boiler. Or I missed it! Those kinds of things can happen when you are frantic about your heating.

I'm going to say, that the Gorton #1 works, and seals, but it is making the marginal plumbing stand out like a sore thumb. The heating in the back of the house got worse. The radiators fill later, not sooner.

Somehow there's a lot of water (condensate) at that end. I could hear water in the radiator and steam ?gurgling through it, bubbling. (The boiler was on and in mid cycle.) Without the main vent, the amount of water was tiny. The right way to fix it is the tear out my walls and totally replace the work of the "plumber from hell" who is torturing me from 20 years ago. I can't afford this, and honestly, I'm going to be selling this house to move closer to my kids, so I really don't want to sink a lot of funds into this.

The boiler cycled on LWCO. I don't know why it does that, maybe that's due to residual oil in the boiler. When the water returns, the boiler is 2/3 full in the sight glass. During the first cycle, the upstairs radiators fed by the vented main were cold, and I could hear water sloshing in the pipes. Then the water drained back. The second cycle, the radiators heated, but I also heard water, but I guess, not as much.

I think I will remove the #1, because the heating behaves better. Not optimal, but the heat arrives sooner without the main vent. I know there's a problem inside the walls, likely a badly pitched horizontal section, but I would have to pull a toilet and a radiator to get any access. That denies me use of my bathroom for an extended period of time. And I'm not sure I can fix the problem easily. The access is poor, there's a chimney coming up, which takes up room that could have used to fix the problem.

Kind of perplexed really.

Don't know if I should return these Gortons and get MoM's. That would let me reuse the orifices I made which work in my house. I would have to drill out (modify) my Gortons to balance my home. Obviously, I'd check them first to see if they even work before modifying them. If I use the MoM's I could return the #1.

Confused as to whether I should return the #1. Dogma says use the vent. Empirical evidence is to the contrary. No matter what the reason was, I got less fill in the radiators using the #1, and the heat onset was late. That's like having undersized radiators, and the rooms are colder. Not good.

Color me confused. What would you do?

@ethicalpaul I asked this earlier, but are your MoM vents from Supply House, free from strong chemical smells? You didn't directly answer me. And sorry for this personal question, do you have a reasonable sense of smell? Some folks don't.

Thanks. That's helpful.

Can you provide any insight on my "procedure"? I'm not so young anymore, so I'd like to do the cleaning in an efficient manner.

Thanks, that makes things clearer. I'll see if I can scare up a transfer pump, that would make things a lot easier for me.

That's much better! Would make my life a lot easier.