Posted by J Dooley on January 15, 2000 at 06:35:38:
I own an oil-fired steam heating system in my home. I just replaced 3 leaking steam vents on 3 of my upstairs radiators with 3 new heattimer varivalve units. The next night, a different radiator in the same room with one that just got the new valve started spewing water from the 2 month old varivalve!
Additionally, some of the radiators that just got new valves are hammering a little. What did I do wrong?
I tried to set the new varivalves to the same relief level as the units that I was replacing. Since all 3 radiators in question are upstairs, near the end of the line, I set all of them to about 7/8 open. Is this correct? Would it be better to set each upstairs radiator slightly less open than the others?
By the way, I drained some of the water from the boiler the same day that the one radiator spewed, and a lot of brown dirt came out of the boiler.
Thank you for your help.