Posted by Karen Field on December 24, 1999 at 08:20:50:
In Reply to: steam heat posted by mmcelroy on December 02, 1999 at 20:17:32:
: Our heating system has had various plumbers shaking their heads - we have a new steam boiler with radiators that have no valves. One guy said the piping was set up for a hot water-gravity system (there are two different diameter pipes for each radiator) and another guy said that the radiators had no valves because they had steam traps built in. We're paying alot for a fairly cold house. We had no heat at all in one quadrant of the house until someone put valves on two of the 11 radiators in the house, and the attic radiators only get warm if its in the 20's for a couple of days. Has anyone heard of steam traps? Or should we put valves on all of the radiators?
While there are one-pipe steam systems for heating they operate
at very low pressures. Assuming you installed a boiler with
enough boiler horse-power to do the job, very little heating
will occur if the steam has no residence time in the
radiator. The addition of a steam trap on the outlet
side of the radiator allows the steam to give up it's heat
and opens only on the presence of condensate (the product of
steam condensing back into water) Gravity or steam pressure
will cause the condensate to be pushed back to the make up tank
and re-used in the boiler. Without actually seeing your
system, I can only guess at what is going on. Look in the
phone book under steam specialties or steam traps we probably
have a distributor in your area that could help you.
-Karen Field
Spriax Sarco, Inc