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Posted by Tony Conner on December 30, 2005 at 19:28:42:
In Reply to: Squirrels in the Check Valves posted by CharlesJ on December 29, 2005 at 15:22:39:
I'd suspect the check valves are too large for the flow, and the chattering you're hearing is the disc fluttering up and down like a flag in the wind. This will typically produce more pressure drop than the correctly sized (as in smaller) check that is driven wide open by the flow. It will also cause the check valves to wear out long before their time, as the disc is chattering against the seat, among other things. Check valves are like control valves - a pretty good rule of thumb is that the valve is one pipe size smaller than the correctly sized pipe. Bear in mind that these little low pressure steam boilers typically have oversized steam outlet piping, as they rely on it to help prevent carry-over.