Adding Main Vents At The End Of A Steam Main That Has A Horizontal Drip - Eccentric Couplings Rule!

Using concentric reducer couplings at the end of a steam main is poor piping practice, as it can hold significant amounts of water in the path of the travailing steam.
Sometimes, you can sort of get away with this.
Sometimes.
But, that concentric reducer is even more likely to cause issues if you also need to add vents at the ends of those mains (and almost all steam mains should be properly vented!)
Those vents will accelerate the steam right into the impounded water, which will be more likely to hammer and damage your newly added vents.
• Adding Main Vents To G... Link to the follow-up video.

[@MichaelHartman-c8b]

Thanks!

[@dannywilkins887]

Good spot Gordon, the same reason why in hydronic heating a horizontal reducer should be flat topped to remove all air

[@ed6837]

As long as when the copper is lowered slightly it isn't running up hill.

[@gordonschweizer5154]

Yes sir, that's the idea.

[@marcinmerrimack1726]

Not clear. There's been no venting of the steam main?
The reducing junction where the copper begins is the start of the dry return?
Why is much of the steam -carrying piping uninsulated? Are you going to correct that?

[@gordonschweizer5154]

@@marcinmerrimack1726 This is a one hundred years old vapor system. There may have been venting on this long main, and it most likely took the form of a "cross-over trap" that then sent the un-wanted air (and air is almost always unwanted in steam systems lol!) back to the one main vent via the dry return to the "vent trap" in the boiler room.
I figure the basement was finished off, and that piping was a head-banger and so it was redone by someone not as well-versed in vapor heating systems as they should have been.

[@marcinmerrimack1726]

@@gordonschweizer5154 Ok, thanks. Haven’t run across the terms “vapor systems” or “cross-over traps” before. Will watch for your follow-up video. Will be nice if you give a more complete picture of the existing system and its history.

[@gordonschweizer5154]

@marcinmerrimack1726 The point of this video was to show that concentric reductions at the ends of steam mains are bad piping practice, and to advise the use eccentric fittings instead, and not to give a long dissertation on the joys of 1920s Dunham coal-fired Vapor/Vacuum Heating Systems.
I have hundreds of other videos about steam systems in general and many on vapor systems too.
Please do me the honor of checking them out.
I try to keep these videos fairly short as after about 30 seconds, ytube tells me I've lost about half my viewers.