Welcome back friends, especially my east coast followers who have the privilege of heating their homes with good old reliable steam heat.
In this two part video series, you’ll learn how to remove and replace a steam radiator valve.
A majority of the homes along the east coast are still being heated with steam heat whereby a good old fashioned cast iron boiler resides in the basement.The water in the boiler is heated with oil or natural gas as the fuel, it then turns into steam and gets distributed through out the steam piping system and into big cast iron radiators.
The steam enters the radiators thru shut off valves located either on the left or right side, and to this day people still try to control the amount of heat that enters the radiator by throttling the valves on or off. News bulletin my friends! These are service valves meant to shut-off or service the radiator in the event of a problem. Some of these valves have been in service for as much as 60 years and eventually they will leak.
In part 1 of this two part series I walk you through process of how I go about removing and replacing them.To the novice handy-person the tendency is to get a large wrench with some leverage on it and then try (unsuccessfully) to screw them off. A word of caution “DON’T DO IT”! I can almost guarantee that you will break off the steam fittings below the floor which will lead to an expensive plumbing repair and that means you’ll to have call someone like me which you probably don’t want to do. Pay attention to how I systematically go about removing them, I can guarantee you that once you get the hang of it you’ll never try to screw one off again!
Check out this video (part 1) which includes my recommended tools for the job and then jump on over to the conclusion of “How to Remove a Steam Radiator Valve – part two“.
HAPPY PLUMBING!
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