Posted by Tom Tompkins on July 03, 2001 at 05:11:24:
We're having a ca. 1947 oil-fired steam boiler replaced. Unfortunately, it seems we chose the wrong heating/plumbing contractor for the job because it's been almost two months since the old boiler was removed and he still hasn't finished connecting the new one. I'm beginning to doubt his ability to work with steam as he wanted to pipe the new system differently. Ours is a 120 year-old home that is much longer than it is wide. It's a combination 1 and 2-pipe system. Since the boiler isn't centrally located, the portion of the system that runs through a crawl-space (the longer)feeding the remote reaches of the ground floor has a return, while that within the dug-out basement that supplies the remainder of the same floor and all of the second story does not. The original installation had a pipe that connected between the overhead steam supply and the return where it entered the bottom of the boiler (right after the Hartford Loop), but this fellow intended to "Y" the two connections on the overhead pipe together and pipe them to the top of the new boiler. After I showed him a photo I'd taken of the original installation he decided maybe he'd check with someone else about what to do, but he's not been back since.
What do you think about this?