Welcome! Here are the website rules, as well as some tips for using this forum.
Need to contact us? Visit https://heatinghelp.com/contact-us/.
Click here to Find a Contractor in your area.
dsf
Options

JH_2
Member Posts: 57
0
Comments
-
steam advice
Hi all...
Looking for some advice from the steamheads while I wait for Dan's book to get here in the mail.
I'm not a pro, just a renter that moved into an apartment with steam heat. I had a place with gas/steam years ago but I never thought about it much. This new place has issues, so I read pretty much everything on here and am looking for advice.
First off I rent. Im on the second floor of a two family with 2 oil fired single pipe steam plants. My boiler is an American Severn, boilerplate says 400 sq ft rad on a 1.75 burner. Its baffled and per the maintenance card is running 1.2gph. It has a tankless coil water heater tied into a superstor ultra tank setup to run as an indirect. The boiler has a single header - I think 3.5 or 4 in that T's into the mains, I measured about 28-30" from the water line to the main. the maints are 12 ft to the back of the house of 1.5" and 25 ft to the front of the house of 2" necked down to 1.5" and appear to be pitched well. There are main vents but they are near the boiler. From reading in the library Im roughly guessing around 150 sq ft of radiators.
It drinks oil - 1/2 a 275g tank in 6 weeks just making hot water. Also the rads heat uneven and lots of water hammer, hissing vents. And the basement was aobut 85F.
The system works - thought not great - Im not going to ask the landlord to replace it of course, but I figured with some work I can get it running better. Landlord has the service contract so I had the tech in to do the tune up. One radiator - that looks like a late add on - wont heat at all so he turned up the pressuretrol, which as I expected from the info here didnt do anything.
So I read through here and did the following-
1 I insulated all the pipes and even the tankless coil.
2 I turned down the pressuretrol to 0.5 in/1.5 out
3 I opened all the radiator supply valves fully
4 I added shims to pitch the radiators properly
5 I boiled all the vents in vinegar and replaced a couple that wouldnt seal with what I could find at HD (cheapos)
6 I flushed the low water cut off until the water ran clear and drained the boiler down to 1/2 height in the glass.
7 I swapped the way out of adjustment mechanical thermostat for a Honeywell Focus programmable that I had from my old place.
Now things run better. Basement is down to 70F. Water hammer is gone and the radiators all heat, and they do in 25 min or so rather than an hour+. Burner runs a lot less often. Water in the sight glass looks clean and doesnt move at all over a week. When I flush the cutoff once a week it comes out rusty/ muddy at first then clears.
Still have some issues. Even after the rads are hot a couple of them hiss and gurgle. Going down to the boiler I dont feel any air from the main vents and they look rusted in place so I dont want to touch them. Also when the heat comes up after a long setback the burner just runs well after all the radiators are hot long before the pressuretrol cuts off. In fact I took the cover off the pressuretrol to watch the switch and it would only cut out if I cranked the cut in well below zero... Maybe the scale is out of calibration?
Bottom line. The system is not great... from my limited understanding and reading here it needs end of main vents, rework of the near boiler piping and probably a lower burner setting. The boiler probably needs to be completely flushed and clean - but the drain tap at the bottom is totally clogged. Really it needs a a whole new boiler. But Im not the owner and am not going to ask the landlord to do that since I may be out in a few years.
Any other simple things I can do to make it run better?0
This discussion has been closed.
Categories
- All Categories
- 87K THE MAIN WALL
- 3.2K A-C, Heat Pumps & Refrigeration
- 57 Biomass
- 425 Carbon Monoxide Awareness
- 115 Chimneys & Flues
- 2.1K Domestic Hot Water
- 5.7K Gas Heating
- 107 Geothermal
- 160 Indoor-Air Quality
- 3.6K Oil Heating
- 70 Pipe Deterioration
- 983 Plumbing
- 6.3K Radiant Heating
- 389 Solar
- 15.4K Strictly Steam
- 3.4K Thermostats and Controls
- 54 Water Quality
- 44 Industry Classes
- 48 Job Opportunities
- 18 Recall Announcements