No Header, No Equalizer, No Problem!

You can ignore good piping practice all over the place, and many of your jobs will work.

Some will work fine.

Some won't.

Some will be more costly to run than if they were piped properly.

Some will hammer.

Some will partially heat.

Some won't return condensate.

We see this all the time in the field. Few fitters pipe these systems properly these days. We fix these problems all day long. They pay my bills.

From a commercial and professional standpoint, knowing what will work properly and what will cost extra money with no return is important in pricing your work and protecting your reputation. Cutting corners or working efficiently? Call it what you want.

This is an interesting thread.

Define "performs fine". In your video you said "everything's fine". One of the most important things to the persons paying the bill is fuel efficiency. Like I said in your video comments why don't you take it further and do some measurements of fuel efficiency? It may be a bit late in the season for this now but you would keep it going for an entire billing cycle and compare to the same month last year accounting for degree days. Solar insolation matters too but I don't know how you'd factor that in or get the data. If you do this you would prove your claim that no BTUs are lost. It would also be interesting to put your thermal imaging camera on a tripod and capture video of a radiator over a full boiler cycle for comparison for when you switch back to your overbuilt double takeoff drop header installation with 9.2 fps velocity.

Also, your water quality and boiler are pristine to a level that is simply not realistic when compared to the situations that are out in the field. You used distilled water and 8 way from day one of this installation. Your TDS and TSS are practially nill. You should throw some iron oxide particles into the boiler to simulate 50 to 100 ppm TSS that is probably very common in people's real world installs and with the lack of maintenance that is rampant out there.

He has a cast iron boiler full of water that is getting distilled water returned from 100 year old radiators, you don't think there's iron in it?

I'm not sure about Paul's, but my boiler full of Steamaster still ends up with a rusty film on the gauge glass after winter, I assume from the water returning from the radiators, and probably some from the boiler too. All the water treatment in the world isn't protecting everything above the water line.

Thank you for your comment and allowing me to clarify since you didn't understand me. He probably has much lower ppm of TSS and TDS than the typical boiler out there and I believe he has, with the exception of a few brief experiments (which were cool), used 8-Way and distilled since install time. He has said that his one pipe steam system has totally clear water coming out of his returns. That is a far cry from the mud that comes out of mine even though I have on my best behavior in maintenance the past few years. What I am saying which you somehow didn't get is that until ppm of TSS gets up around 50 ppm and above, there is usually minimal problems which would present themselves as wetter steam initially. 100 ppm and above is said to probably cause carry over. Have you measured paul's TSS in his boiler? What is it? Most people who replenish lost water with municipal water have ever climbing TDS in the boiler. I only recently stopped using my municipal water which has total hardness of 382 ppm.

You'd think fixing the water would be much easier than repiping a poorly installed boiler.

Agreed and that is what I have done. I no longer have dirty boiler water spewing out of my 1st floor radiators, which happened beginning of last season. The worst of my two mains actually is actually fed by a more or less a vertical run with undersized 2 in. copper pipe and the undersized 2 in. header leading to the larger main teed off of it and the equalizer. That's the one in my 63-04L that is most prone to carry over. I am hoping my steam is pretty dry with the distilled water and 8-Way plus diligent draining and flushing every season beginning. My sight glass is moving up and down less than 1/4 in.. At the beginning of this season, even with the distilled plus 8-Way it was starting to carry over as proven by the plummeting sight glass and pressure on the gauge well before any radiators got steam and draining along with multiple back flushes of the boiler and the returns fixed the problem again. I caught it before anything spewed from the radiator in question but it was not heating.

Yes we do agree on that point, although I have gone to extreme measures by only using preboiled rebottled distilled water with 8-way, for initial fill and makeup water. That is something that very few will do and no boiler mfg's installation manual even hints that it may be advisable in some cases where the TDS of the municipal water is excessively high and the particulate contamination makes the TSS too high during normal operation due to the dirty 100 year old radiators and pipes.

The caveat is that I do not know if I have dry steam, aka less than 2% liquid. I do not know what my fuel efficiency improvement might be if I had proper, or even overbuilt, near boiler piping like you have. For me to say "good performance" the steam needs to be dry and fuel efficiency matters. That's where we differ and I totally disagree with the "no btus lost" mantra.

I was making a point that it will make the steam wetter, which should show as even more fogginess in the interior volumetric space of his sight glass and would be more realistic compared to people's real world systems in their houses who don't go to his and my extremes with water. He has done it before, as in adding oil. I wasn't suggesting that and it is entirely up to him. Adding iron oxide would be less damaging to the system and is pretty easily flushed out. He picks his experiments. I have said that a scientist makes the proper "measurements" to back up their claims, or even see if they can disprove them.

My experience over the past 21 years has proven otherwise to me. This is the cure (draining and flushing at beginning of season plus distilled water and 8-way only) for a horrible heating season for me, with my 389 ppm total hardness municipal water, 100 year old (probably was lots of carryover) dirty radiators and pipes, 278 ppm chlorides, etc.. People really don't like when you tell them what they have seen with their own eyes isn't true. Not everyone's situation is the same.

Just for laughs.

Cedric — almost old enough to vote now — was skimmed when he was installed. Otherwise he has never run on anything other than pure well water (pH right around 7, moderately hard). Granted, he is beautifully piped (for historical reasons, drop header plus a large steam drum). Also granted, he is a commercial boiler — Weil-McClain 80 series.

I forget the last time he was drained and flushed — was quite a while back — although the MM LWCO is blown down weekly (and, by the way, needs to be replaced — 10 years old and gotten a bit sticky).

I'd watch out for distilled or deionized water — unless inhibitors are added it is remarkably corrosive. And I'd watch out for adding chemicals, unless a buffer is needed for some reason — and then only just enough. Too much is worse than too little in that game.

That's an area Paul and I disagree on. I feel main vents should be sized by firing the boiler up, letting the system heat and then shutting it down, waiting 5 minutes and firing it again to see how much backpressure there is. There should be very little, 1" WC give or take, with nice hot pipes.

If your venting is slow, pressure will build and there's a very obvious change in the system's behavior. Besides being noisy, annoying and possibly slow, I'm not sure how much it effects efficiency. I'm not sure anyone has ever shown a way to figure it out? My assumption is it's wasteful,annoying and unnecessary.

What actual real world effects does building 2 psig of steam pressure have on efficiency vs free flowing at half an ounce or less?

I would be nice to see some actual real numbers on that vs "It's less efficient". If it's 0.1% less efficient no one's going to care.

Captain, you're clouding the issue with logic.

You're letting old fashioned facts enter into this…

I'll chime in on a couple points:

Regarding the "lost" energy — I agree with Paul, it's going somewhere in the house. It is not lost up the chimney — that portion is accounted for in the efficiency of the boiler itself. The cited example at someone's mother's house, where the boiler ran longer due to a venting issue — it probably went to heat the basement, and out through poorly insulated basement windows.

Regarding the water quality vs. piping issue. Again I agree with Paul's basic statement, with some caveats.

First is the "professional" aspect, which @EDEBRATT-Ed brought out on page one. No need to expand on that.

The second is, once you have an oil problem, you're in for long-term issues. I still have issues two seasons into my new boiler. My own fault, and it's getting better, but while I'm working it out, my overdone piping is helping keep things humming along.

My only disagreement is with the idea to "just" fix the water quality. Just is a four-letter word.

My sin was that I neglected to wash out my new boiler with TSP. I also added a lot of new piping without washing it. All that oil spread around the system, and skimming only removes a little at a time. Right after skimming, a long heat cycle takes between one-and-a-half and two gallons of water from the boiler. Early in the process, it took a couple, three days for the waterline to recede by 5 gallons and more, after more oil returned from the system. That's carryover alright, and having an "equalizer" helped keep more of it close by. My LCWO has never yet kicked in. Whenever the water gets > 5 gallons low, I skim.

Early this season — the boiler's second — it took two weeks to get to that point. I'm there again, now five weeks after the last skimming. So this is converging, but it's taking two seasons and counting. We have soft water, so I'm just heating it to near boiling and I treat it with 8-way. Rust and sludge are minimal. I hope to get to the point where I'm done skimming forever.

Round numbers, I skimmed a couple dozen times in the first season, and six times so far in the second. That's a lot of wasted energy and water and time.

This was a really long way to say, when a homeowner shows up here with problems, oil in the water can be a long-term consideration.

cheers -matt

How quickly you get steam to the radiators does indeed improve total gas usage to satisfy the thermostat (I am avoiding the word efficiency here on purpose. As many of you know I have carefully recorded my gas usage vs HDD on a monthly basis for over 15 years now dedicating 3 entire years to comparisons of setbacks and main vent location. Pertinent to this discussion is the main vent location which in my case shortened time to main vent closure and delivery of steam to the runouts. The difference is quantifiable. Unfortunately, I did not have a simple comparison of poor vs good main venting since my main venting changed soon after getting a new boiler, changing my setback process, swapping out a bad sunroom radiator and adding some storm windows. All these factors are subsequently largely unchanged for the period comparing the baseline (no setback and vents at boiler - red) vs no setback vents at end of mains (green) vs setbacks with vents at end of mains. The conclusions were moving the main vents to end of the mains on an average winter month of about 800 total HDD with a constant hold temperature thermostat control I saved about 6 McF of gas use per month vs baseline. Going to a setback with the mains at end of the mains also showed an improvement but it was primarily just on more moderate temperature months with less impact on the coldest months. The two different plot styles below (same data) are used because the second one with the logarithmic curve fits shows the seasonal impact of setbacks more clearly.

If someone has some better data please share.