Wow. Thank you for the very well defined advice on all fronts, but especially the valve which I was only guessing about. I haunt the site you mention, but already had a huge stack of books on my plate so I hadn't gotten to the books specifically for boilers yet. I'm still a bit in learning mode as to vocabulary to better my searches on that site. I'm slowly shifting into "winter project mode", and right now I've been up to my ears in insulation info as well as dealing with the plumbing emergency we had.SweetCottage wrote:Hi Beebe, I live in western MA and have steam heat. {snip}
I had started a specific thread about our system right after we moved in, but it's buried now. A few things were addressed back then, which I'll detail below.
We may outright replace the one vent in the bathroom that it looks like they punched a second hole in it. I will reread your overall advice more thoroughly later to see what could help with the tropic bedroom rad, and to make sure I will be adjusting the valve in the office correctly. The latter has worried me the most, because you can see where the wood was damaged prior to us buying, and I'm betting it's for the same reason there's a towel there now.
I did know about the vinegar bath, but did not manage to get around to that this year because I was too easily distracted by the other stuff, especially our long neglected yard. I have vinegared the shower head, though, because it was spraying in 20 directions, which was especially bad for the full sized original wood window/trim in the one tub wall you can see pictured in an earlier post.
At first, we had issues with the upstairs not heating much at all, but I got that figured out a while back with help from folks here in the thread mentioned above. Some of the rads throughout were a bit off level, which we've fixed either with some very small oddball ceramic tiles I found for free or wood shims if the tiles were too tall. They are all fine now as to level. One (that tropic bedroom) is at a very weird angle away from the wall, and when we tried to walk it back, we realized we'd have to undo the connecting fixture a bit and weren't quite ready for that (tools all jumbled still). It's on the ToDo list.
Thanks for the reminder about the pipe vents. I've been looking at our bells, but need to do more research. They do have some accumulated gunk on them, but they seem to be working as intended.
There's evidence that the cellar lines were insulated at one point, but I think it was the asbestos cement, and they removed it for renting.
When we had the too cold issue upstairs, we had a case of too much water, and fortunately the drain hose for the boiler was left behind by the POs so that wasn't hard to remedy, though I fretted over the lost water. Now, though, after adjustments to all the levels, I check at least every other day and we are needing to add a bit of water now and again, but not very much at all when we do. That actually surprises me because the tropic bedroom and office I thought would still be pushing out a lot, but apparently not.
One other thing that had been throwing the system off balance is the between the first floor front of house rooms (library, parlor) there is only one door on the entire 30ish' of wall, and we had been keeping it closed because our older kitty was having some stress issues and making messes all over. That would result in those front rooms being quite warm (but not tropic), and the boiler would run longer before the thermo would register high enough to click off. Now that our kitty has calmed down, we've been keeping the door open most of the time, and that makes a world of difference. The tropic-ness of the upstairs bedroom in particular isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. It was thick like pea soup when that door was closed, and now it's more a really muggy Southern day.
I've been wanting to move the thermostat because it's in 3 of the 5 spots they say for it to never be: near a window/door (it's by both), in direct sunlight, and on the wall behind the kitchen stove (on the dining side). We still haven't found a good "spot" to move it to yet, given the layout and doorways/stairs/hallway of the dining room. Our goal is to narrow that down this year, and move it next spring.
I also still have a fair amount of air leaks to seal of various sorts regarding doors/windows. I'm tackling those as I can and budget allows. We've done some temporary measures in some cases which help, but eventually will bronze and reglaze the remainders. We also have an issue with some of our aluminum storm tracks not being square, but we've only fixed them "enough for now" because we plan to replace them with wood storms later as time/budget allow.
Lastly, we are missing one rad, in the kitchen, and there is no rad nor pipes in the one bedroom upstairs which we're still a bit puzzled about and couldn't get any answers from the family as to why.
From what I found under the fake wood vinyl slats they put down in the kitchen, it's evident that the rad had a major mishap, where the vinyl got brittle and melted. We have been looking at replacements, but have not yet had funds for it. So far, because that room is so small and there's no door between it and the dining, it's been coolish in there, but not horribly so. We hope to get a replacement by next year's winter at the latest, but time will tell.
Thank you again for all the advice, and the diagram especially is helpful. I will report back once I've had time to give it the proper attention it deserves, and attempt some further repairs.