Posted by mmcelroy on December 03, 1999 at 10:28:31:
Is there such a thing as a steamtrap? I've had so many conflicting assessments of our heating system - don't know who to beleive. We have a steam boiler with radiators that have no valves. One guy said our house was piped for hot water-gravity (there are two pipes of different diameter going into each radiator) and another plumber said our radiators have steam traps in them to regulate flow. We don't get much heat from the radiators unless it's in the 20's. In one section of our house we had never had heat until one plumber put valves on two out of the three radiators which run off the same line vertically (we have a three story house).
Do we need new steam traps, as one guy suggested, or valves on all the radiators? Oh, and one of the radiators which had a valve put on now heats but is overflowing and has now put a hole in the kitchen ceiling from the leaking. The plumber said that was because of the bad steamtrap. Help!