February 22, 2015

Steam Heat

My home has radiators that are 70ish years old. I'm going to guess the air vents are 10-30 years old. It's supposed to let the air out while the pipe fills with steam. Then and this is the important part, it stops letting anything out of the pipe and keeps the steam in the pipe. Some of our valves weren't letting the air out, and some was letting everything out.

Also;

  1. It's cold in my room
  2. Our boiler runs out of water too often
  3. Our windows take a constant bath from condensation

So lets fix some things.

[gallery type="slideshow" link="none" size="large" ids="1629,1627,1628,1632"]

The vents in the peanut butter jar were old, came with the house. They didn't quite close when the steam hit them so they whistled a ton. So if you have a PB jar full of vents I recommend installing them at night so nobody is awake to hear them. The next day Sara drove me in the snow to spend a lot of money on valves from a store. I replaced the vents in my bedroom which were clogged. The air couldn't escape so it couldn't fill with steam. The one in the bathroom would never close, so while our bathroom was very warm, it also very damp. Notice the rust around the vent in the photo? That's crazy. The last two had similar problems.

It's so quiet! I love it! I hope my bedroom is warmer, I'll find out. I can't confirm it but I bet the house will heat a little faster, and my hunch is that the air will be much less humid.

I wish I could somehow measure the heat in the house vs outside, the time it takes to warm the house, the humidity, etc etc. Oh wait! I know how!

nest

I'll use my Nest! Unfortunately they don't seem to make it easy to use the data. Looks like I may have to get clever.

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