The Limit To A Hot Water Zone Off A Steam Boiler
"You can do it," I told them both. "It's done all the time. Just make sure you use a bypass line to blend some return water into the supply water so the water in the radiator doesn't get any hotter than 180 degrees. If it's too hot, it ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Boiler Sizing
When steam heating was new, back at the turn of the 19th century, coal was the fuel of choice. It burned hot, and it burned long. A good coal-fired boiler would stay lit for eight to 10 hours on a load of coal. Those early boilers contained cast ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Cleaning Wet Returns On A Steam System
2. If it's not already there, I'll pipe in a boiler drain and ball valve on each leg of the wet return. This allows me to flush the line and direct the mess through a garden hose to a safe place outside the building. The cost of the few fittings ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Some Thoughts On A Snowy Morning
So I cleaned the boiler’s flueways, set up the Beckett to burn 1.00 GPH (about 140,000 BTUH input) and started it up. I quickly noticed the stack temperature soaring- it stabilized at 835 degrees. The old stack relay cut off the ignition after ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
The Limit To A Hot Water Zone Off A Steam Boiler
Never add the hot-water-zone load to the steam load when you're sizing the steam boiler. This is a game of subtraction, not addition. Size the steam boiler first. Base it on the connected radiation load, plus a suitable pick-up factor. Then work ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Low-Water Cutoffs Belong On All Boilers
On this particular job, however, the calcium and magnesium kept building up inside the guy’s boiler and that became a problem for him. Before anyone noticed, the lime had sealed the insides of the boiler. Less and less water flowed into the ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Considering Modular Steam Boilers?
Now, if you look in any steam-heating text, you'll see that when you have two big boilers such as these you have to pipe each one with an independent condensate-return line. If you connect both of those big boilers to a single boiler feed pump ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Considering Modular Steam Boilers?
This is a common cause of boiler flooding in any steam system that has more than one boiler. It's the reason why when you open those steam-heating textbooks you'll see either a gate valve or a check valve on the main supply leaving each boiler. ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
How That Steam Boiler Got To Be So Big
When the wealthier people who lived in single-family homes made the leap from fireplaces to central heating systems they chose either steam or gravity hot water heat because that was the best that was available. They also chose coal as a fuel ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Boiler Room Penthouse
For many, hiring a designer sounds expensive, but it can be quite cost effective — especially if the designer is a close friend. Dana was able to buy materials at wholesale price and her fee was just a small ... [... more]
NineMSN OurHouse |
How An Undersized Steam Boiler Can Still Heat A Building
And this is how that undersized boiler managed to heat the building for all those years. It came on and ran for a long time. During that time, the people who were in the rooms furthest from the boiler noticed that their radiators weren't getting ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
Boiler Failure After Two Years
We walked over for a closer look. They were Hydrotherms, little boilers that had worked together in a modular setup to get a big job done. I looked up at the four-story apartment building. “It’s for seniors,” Joe said. “That’s why they went with ... [... more]
Master Plumbers |
