I just moved into a new place, and it’s heated by radiators. I’ve never encountered them before.
All of the radiators are pretty quiet, but one is incredibly loud most of the time - hissing uncontrollably and clanging. It has a littl valve on the side that if I turn, the sounds stop, and a little but of water spurts out of the valve.
What is this? Is it ok to leave it in the “open” (water spurts out, nose stops) position? The apartment stays warm enough with it like this, but I don’t want it to blow up or something.
Sounds like an airlock. You’re on the right lines using the valves to let air escape. However, if water’s spurting out, the air isn’t trapped in that one. It’s most likely to be at the highest point (kinda obviously), so find the highest radiator, loosen the valve on that one, see if air escapes. Then check the others. Noise can travel a long way through water-filled pipes, so the origin could be anywhere.
Are your radiators one pipe or two? If a one-piper’s off level, water can collect in the pipe and cause noise. Not terribly uncommon if the pipe runs horizontally for much distance. Solution is to tilt the rad so the pipe can drain back to the boiler. If the pipe pops up out of the floor under the rad, try lifting the radiator a bit. Yeah, I *know * it’s heavy, but that’s why the floor sagged underneath it!
At my apartment, we have radiators that appear to have a pipe on both ends… I assume that hot water comes in one side and cooler water leaves the other. How would a one-pipe radiator work? How would the water circulate?
Ya know, there’s nothing worse than a misunderstood radiator…
Gorillaman and gotpasswords have the right ideas. Make sure that when you’re bleeding off the air, that the heat is on and the water is hot and circulating, or you could allow air to get sucked back in the system.
Sunspace
A one-pipe system is usually steam. The steam rises to the rads, cools, condenses on the walls of the pipe and rads, and drips back to the boiler. It’s weird, I know, but it works.
If water is spitting out when freejooky opens the bleeder, it’s probably a 2-pipe water heating system. The steam ones usually have a pressure relief that can be adjusted to allow some steam to escape for humidity control.
Okay, that makes a LOT more sense. I didn’t know that some radiators used steam. That actually sounds a lot mnore efficient in terms of heat transfer versus amount of fluid to be used. However, wouldn’t that make the rads too hot to touch?
Additional concerns with steam heating - first, if you don’t get the air out of the system on start-up, you’ve got a big problem with corrosion rates - you’ve got heat, a susceptable material (metal), oxygen, and moisture available from the condensate. The good thing about steam heat systems are that they are more efficient in terms of heat being transferred with a minimum of energy invested for movement, and that per unit mass of the heating medium more heat is transfered. The drawbacks are in where the system becomes more ‘real’ or has conditions that draw it further and further from the ideal situation - air in the piping, corrosion, and other maintenance issues.
My apartment is full of one-pipe steam radiators. Unfortunately, they only have three settings: Off, Thermonuclear, and Big Bang.
Consequently, my building has lots of open windows in the middle of winter, due to people trying to find a happy medium between the awesome energy of ten billion galaxies and the cool winter air.
My last 3 apartments have all had radiators. My current one one is similar to friedo’s (though it looks like I’ve got a 2-pipe system). The thing about steam radiators is you can only turn the valve entirely on or entirely off. If it’s on any setting in between, cold water meets hot steam and causes a banging sound. Other problems could be that your steam trap needs to be replaced (I’ve read that they only last 4-5 years or so) or that the radiator and flooring have settled is such a way that the radiator no longer has the correct slope. For those things, you should contact your landlord (my boyfriend’s apartment also has 2-pipe steam heat and they just went through and replaced the steam traps on all the radiators in his building).
Incidentally, I was just reading up on this last week. I came across a cool blog (www.houseinprogress.net) which was one of the first sites to come up on google. This site has some nice pictures that can help you figure out what type of heating system you have, as can this one: hot water heat, steam heat.
FWIW, if any of you would like to learn more about steam heating, pick up a copy of “The Lost Art of Steam Heating” by Dan Holohan. He writes in a very readable style, such that the text is entertaining and informative.
I lived in Forest Hills, Woodside, and Astoria. Dunno what it is about NYC apartments, and Queens apartments but dang. I used to keep a pot of water on the radiator to help with the dryness. One finds out just what one is drinking, when one evaporates away 4-6 cups of water a night in a saucepan. :eek:
Mine had similar settings, the clanking and smacking and hissing became the soundtrack of my nights.
One pipe steam radiators are the oldest type of radiator. gotpasswords link shows a good photo of it. The thing to note is… no pump. Boilers with one pipe radiators started out with no electric parts since they began to be installed before electricity became common.
Then came 2 pipe steam systems as previously mentioned. These are annoying also because of the problems previously mentioned - trapped air, clanging, the control valve leaking, live steam leaking out the trap where only condensed steam is supposed to go, etc. It was an evolution from the one pipe system that used most of the same types of parts but had advantages in where radiators could be placed, how pipes could be run, and improved room temperature control.
Any system built from scratch nowadays will be a hot water system. Better control, easier piping, less noisy, no chance of a burn, smaller radiators, adapability to underfloor systems, more choices of piping materials, less maintenance. The only reason you would come into contact with steam raditor systems is that they can last a looong loong time and it is very costly to retrofit an existing building with a new system. New York City is the prime example. Lots of big buildings built in the teens to the 50’s, the heyday of steam radiators.
The actual mechanics of heat transfer from the hot water or steam to the air is really a pretty simple matter and neither has a great benefit over the other.
