This section is your comprehensive guide on steam heating systems with articles about proper steam piping, boilers, pressure, venting, radiators, water quality, and more. We'll also walk you through troubleshooting steam system problems like noisy pipes.
The phone rang on a cold morning this fall. “I need your help converting my steam system to hot water. I am tired of the banging, uneven heat and astronomical gas bills.
Here’s how you’d pass a steam main over a steel beam: The pitch is in the direction of the flow. The steam goes over the beam through a pipe that’s the same size as the m...
Here’s a war story for you. I stood with a guy in the basement of a small commercial building on Long Island a few winters back. Several weeks earlier he’d attached a bra...
Designing a commercial boiler replacement where you were not the original designer or installer might have some hidden dangers that could haunt you for years. The project...
Gerry Gill is brilliant when it comes to solving steam- and hot-water-heating problems. Learn more about him HERE.
The system is corroding. All steam systems are open to the atmosphere. Whenever you mix water with iron and steel you're going to get rust, and that rust is going to wash...
Steam and condensate flow in the same direction, and the pitch is less than one-inch in 20 feet. There should be no areas where condensate can gather when the system shut...
The strainer is clogged. There should be a wye or a basket strainer on the inlet to the condensate pump. This strainer's job is to collect sediment from the system before...
A New York City contractor called me a last winter to tell me about a situation that he had gotten himself into. We’ll call him Augie because that’s close enough. "The ol...
Years ago, steam heating was a business of installing complete systems and not just a business of replacing boilers and fixing problems, as it is today. Manufacturers mad...