Unbalanced Heating in 2-Family
We live in a steam heated 3-story, 2 family brownstone & rent out the top floor. It’s cozy downstairs, but frigid upstairs. The difference can be as much as 8 degrees. I was told the top floor is usually warmer than the bottom. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
We live in a steam heated 3-story, 2 family brownstone & rent out the top floor. It’s cozy downstairs, but frigid upstairs. The difference can be as much as 8 degrees. I was told the top floor is usually warmer than the bottom. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
The best way to get an old steam system in a big house working perfectly is human sacrifice.
Since someone else “seconded” the recommendation to bleed, let’s review how a steam system works, so you don’t chase down blind alleys: 1) Flame in the boiler heats the water to a boil in the furnace. 2)Boiling water creates steam, and resultant pressure. 3) The steam, under pressure, looks for the easiest way out — which are air vents on your radiators. 4)Steam travels to the vents, pushing out the air in the pipe in front of it, through the vents. The bigger the vent, the more air can escape, and the faster the steam will go to that vent. 5) Once the steam itself reaches the vent, your radiator will be hot, and the pressure differential will close the vent, blocking more steam from the radiator. 6) As the steam cools it turns to water and runs back down the pipe and back to the boiler for another cycle.
This is very different from a hot water system, where air bubbles can prevent water from circulating through the system, and as such, air needs to be “bled” from the system.
Forgot to mention – Think about replacing the vents on your steam mains in the basement (they should be located at the corners where the steam pipe goes vertical into the upper floors) with proper ones like the Gorton Air Elimators — it will make a HUGE difference.
Seconding the recommendation to “Bleed” the radiators throughout the house. Trapped air is probably keeping the steam from getting to the upper floor. It’s relatively simple, but done better by a couple of people. Have your plumber come do it (and do an annual inspection/tune-up of the boiler). Bleeding the radiators makes a HUGE difference, everything will be much more efficient and you’ll be able to adjust the thermostat down (no matter where it is located).
I spent months figuring this out last winter. My attic too was freezing, and other rooms were way too hot. Generally plumbers can’t do the best job here, simply because you need a lot of time (hours/days/weeks, over various outside temp changes) to see the true effect of any adjustment. Changing the air valve sizing on your radiators is key, (assuming your boiler and thermostat are both fine). It’s a bit of an art, because changing the vent size on one or more radiators changes the pressure balance, and hence temperature at every other point in the system. I ended up using a combination of Gorton, Varivalve, and Danfoss adjustable valves (with either Gorton or Varivalve air vents instead of the stock danfoss vent) to get exactly what I wanted. There are a lot of resources on the web to help you figure it out, but it takes patience and persistence, and you will probably end up buying more valves than you need, just so you can get the balance correct in the end. It’s well worth the effort and acquired knowledge to be able to do it yourself. BTW, don’t listen to Johnny – there is no such thing as “bleeding” a steam system. That concept only applies to a hot water system.
Never mind. I didn’t read your post carefully… SOrry.
Have similar problem with my 3 story. Top floor radiators cool while downstairs toasty.
Crank the heat, check which radiators go on. Air goes to highest point and can block the heat from top radiators. Mine just needed bleeding and worked fine shortly thereafter.
Even when running perfect there’s a bit of a lag for heat to make it to top floor, but only a few minutes.
One simple thing to check (and you may have done this already so ignore me if you have) is where the thermostat is. Often time, it is on the top floor in the vestibule area of a building and doesn’t necessarily kick on when it is colder downstairs than the setting temperature.
You can take a bunch of steps yourself. Your goal is to figure out whether this is a balancing or sizing issue, or something else.
First, when the heat goes on, do all the radiators heat up together, or do the top radiators heat up much mroe slowly? Second, how long does the boiler stay on once the thermostat cals for heat? The whole time until temperature is reached or does it cycle on and off a lot?
If it cycles a lot, make sure you are draining the dirty residue water regularly. Drain it all the way until the boiler shuts off, then shut the spigot and wait to make sure it automatically refills itself with new water from the water line.
If the top floor radiators are slow to heat up, try larger vents on the top floor radiators (Gorton C or D) and smaller ones downstairs (Gorton 4 or 5). You want larger vents up top to draw the steam up faster from the boiler. Make sure you change the vents when the heat is off, and wrap the threads of the new vents with teflon tape before you screw it in. (The vents are the little thingies that stick out of the radiator at the far side away from where the radiator conencts to the pipe.)
If you are still way out of balance, check your radiator sizing. Heatinghelp.com has sizing charts based on cubic footage of the room.
If this is all over your head, or if none of this solves the problem, call a plumber. I recommend John Hlad or Gateway.