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In the living room I installed this valve (brass with red handle) below the air-vent valve to keep the radiator cool. The radiator, once cooled off, will not re-heat.

In order for steam in a one-pipe sytem to enter the raditator, air must be purged. It is this valve's function (i.e. the upper chrome thingy) to stop the steam from escaping, one the air has been purged. It is a simple mechanical, thermostatically-operated valve.

The aluminum foil here is just used to show that it can be used to limit heat! I now tend to use the red-handled valve!

Eventually I will extend the air-vent pipe/tubes to outside of the "radiator" enclosure and place a Danfoss-type automatic mechanical thermostatically-operated valve that respond to room temerature to regulate the heat output of this and other units in the apratment. [this post was last edited: 11/13/2010-00:44]

toggleswitch++11-13-2010-00-19-51.jpg
 
Quote: In the building I lived in with steam heat the upper floors were the hottest with the lower floors the coolest.

The upper floors should have the faster air-vent valves. They have a bigger hole (*COUGH*) to vent air quicker.

The lower floors should have slower ones.

RARELY are buildings properly balanced this way. [this post was last edited: 11/13/2010-00:46]

http://www.inspectapedia.com/heat/Steam_Vents.htm
 
Forced Air Comfort

Yes, there is a chill factor when the systems first come on, and often when they cycle off, when they blow cold air for a a minute or less.

However, I noticed the overall comfort level of my home improved dramatically with the forced air system, when I sealed off air leaks in the ceiling and put in ample insulation in the attic. There is still a heat delivery problem in the master bed/bath addition, which I attribute to a poor duct design (the ductwork to those rooms is of a smaller diamter than that serving the rest of the home), but overall the system functions well and there is not an overly freeze/thaw effect when the home is properly insulated.

Never lived with steam heat, although one apartment we lived in San Francisco had hot water heating. It was ok but difficult to regulate, so I wound up leaving a window open above the radiator in my bedroom most of the time. My mom later moved to another place with steam heat, which she loved, but when the system broke down the landlord replaced it with individual gas heaters in each apartment, which she didn't like. The steam heat had radiators in each room (including bedroom), while the gas heater was stuck in the entrance hallway where the heat stayed and the rest of the rooms stayed cold. The landlord did this instead of fixing the central system because the steam heat was formerly included in rent, while the cost of the gas for the space heater was on the tenants.

Eventually I'll fix the bad duct design in my current home to correct the heat delivery issue (there also may be an obstruction inside the ductwork leading to that area). When I get a round toit.
 
Convectors

Toggleswitch, my apartment had convectors like that. I got a thermostatic valve which had a separate wall-mounted dial, attached to the valve by a few feet of thin, somewhat flexible tubing. Are those still available?
 
I should add that the chill factor with forced air systems, due to the blower coming on before the heat exchanger has gotten hot, and after the gas has been shut off, is to allow the heat exchanger to come to temperature gradually, and to cool off gradually. This helps to minimize thermal stress on the metal in the heat exchanger, minimizing cracking and helping to prevent leaks. I know it's possible to alter the time that the system blows cold air, but I'd rather have a longer life on the heat exchanger than a little more comfort at the beginning and end of cycles.

The initial forced air is colder than room temp because it's been sitting in the ductwork in an unheated area for a while. On my system it's most noticible on start-up, on the coldest days, but generally lasts only about 30 seconds or less (judging from memory). Even with altering the blower time, there will still be a bolus of cold air in the duct work that will come out at the start of a cycle. Nature of the beast, unless one wants to stick the heater and all the ductwork in a heated air space.
 
Forced air ductwork is rarely insulated,

Maybe 30 years ago, but these days all new ductwork is insulated, usually with an inch or more of fiberglass.

This house was built in '41 and the heated side of the ductwork was simply wrapped in asbestos tape. The unheated side was just bare metal. When I weatherized the house one of the things I did was to use non-asbestos fiberglass/mastic tape to seal all the seams (some of which had worked loose and were leaking), and then cover all the ductwork with foil faced fiberglass 1" insulation, the foil side out. Then I sealed all the joins in the foil covering with foil tape. This effectively insulated the ducts as well as limited the amount of asbestos that might later otherwise become airborne. I also added the same 1" insulation around the return ductwork. Not the best application but I figured it could help keep things warmer between cycles.

The area under the master bed/bath addition already had sloppily insulated ducts. My possible mistake was in not removing that old fiberglass insulation, sealing the seams, and then insulating it. Instead I just installed insulation over the old stuff. It was sealed with foil tape so any leaks probably don't get very far, but I'm probably someday going to remove the outer insulation, seal all the seams, and then re-install the insulation. When I get a round toit.

PS-After I weatherized/insulated the house and sealed/insulated the ductwork, I noticed an immediate difference in the amount of time the furnace would fire up on cold days. Instead of being on for an hour or more, it would come on for only 30 minutes or less on the coldest days. The gas bills (actually number of therms consumed) dropped proportionately - a nice result.

One benefit of forced air systems, not mentioned so far, is that with good filtration it can actually clean up the house air a fair amount. The best filters even remove cooking odors and smoke. In tightly sealed homes, this could be an important factor.
 
A little off topic buy pertinent.
While I was in college I had an apartment which had these little gas space heaters. No pilot light, no safety valve. Just a gas on and off turncock. If the gas flamed out it'd just sit there dumping gas into the apartment. These things were all over the place in many different apartment buildings and houses.
I wonder how many people a year those things killed. I know in places like IL & MN, they are illegal.
 
No pilot light, no safety valve.

Here in California all the gas space heaters I've experienced have at least had pilot lights. However the older ones didn't have safety valves, so if the pilot blew out (a not uncommon occurrence) you could potentially turn the gas on and fill up the room with explosive fumes - if you had no sense of smell, that is. Later ones seemed to have safety valves, which also have a limited life span and do need to be replaced from time to time (thermocouples, as I recall). And of course the newer ones have more advanced safety features.

Usually the pilot light in the gas oven would blow out in the various rentals I inhabited. Sometimes just closing the door to the oven too fast would blow out the pilot, in one place I rented. The landlady was a very unpleasant person of middle eastern origin, who would first blame the tenant, and then after much arguing, hire drug addicts to do repairs, so I never complained about it. I would fix what I had to on my own, instead.

Oh, yeah, and that rental was a little two story wood frame house. Quite old, and actually a balloon frame, not a stacked frame like modern wood construction. Anyway, the sole heating for the home was an underpowered wall heater in the downstairs living room/dining room area. The place was quite drafty - one of the walls in the living room was sagging so much that a big horizontal crack opened up at chair level, which I wound up patching with plaster just to keep the drafts out. What heat the wall heater put out went straight up the stairs to just one of the two bedrooms. Which was fine when I used it as such, but the larger bedroom was generally frigid as was the downstairs. Fortunately it doesn't get all that cold here but it can hit 32F in the coldest winter days.

I was very happy move out of there after 12 years, and to buy this current house with central heating and with myself as the landlord :-).
 

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