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It wouldn't be Christmas without a home-maintenance crisis...
So we spent yesterday puttering around the house, reading, cooking, watching the dogs sleep, and staying indoors because it was 12°F outside. Suddenly I heard a ticking noise, quite regular, about 2/second. I figured it was probably a radiator warming up, but thought I should check anyway... and there was water dripping from the living-room ceiling onto the living-room floor. I pushed the leather sofa out of the way, ran to the kitchen and grabbed a bowl to catch the drips, and ran upstairs to see where it was coming from. I didn't see any puddles on the bedroom floor, but there was a pile of dark sawdust near one end of the bedroom radiator, and it appeared that there had been water damage to the parquet floor tiles around the radiator (2-3 feet horizontally away from the place where water was dripping from the living room ceiling. About this time the dripping from the living room ceiling slowed and stopped. So we went back to our reading, somewhat nervous that the ceiling was going to fall in.
Half an hour later the dripping started again, I ran upstairs to see what was going on, and saw water dripping from the radiator's steam-release valve. That's not supposed to happen: it's supposed to be only steam coming out, and not much of that because most of it is supposed to condense exothermically inside the radiator and drip back down to the boiler. I ran to the kitchen and got another bowl to put under the steam-release valve. (This is a little tricky because the edge of the bowl has to be low enough to fit under the valve, high enough and sloped enough to clear another protrusion on the radiator a few inches lower, and the bowl has to be large enough to hold a possibly significant amount of water. I tried three different bowls/pans before being reasonably satisfied.) Still not sure why it's suddenly started doing this, but I thought catching the water at the valve should prevent further ceiling damage.
An hour or two later, sitting in the spare bedroom/office upstairs, I heard water splashing. There was water not only dripping but spewing out of the steam release valve, and the bowl had collected maybe half a gallon of water. I mopped up the excess on the floor, emptied and replaced the bowl. Then noticed that there happened to be two spare steam release valves on the windowsill, left over from the last radiator crisis. What if I just replace the release valve with one of those? The situation is unlikely to get worse: as I recall from the last crisis, we might get less heat in the bedroom, but we'll still get some, and we won't have water seeping through the floorboards.
I reached down to shut off the radiator so it wouldn't steam-scald me when I changed the valve. The knob wouldn't turn. I went to the kitchen to get some cloth pot-holders. The knob still wouldn't turn. I went to the basement to get the Channel-Lock pliers and a monkey wrench, at least one of which should do the job. The knob turned, reluctantly, about a quarter of a turn before breaking in half. Just the 50-plus-year-old plastic knob, no damage to the plumbing, but now it was going to be even harder to turn the radiator off and on again.
I turned the thermostat down to 50°F, effectively shutting off all the radiators in the house, so this one would cool enough for me to change its valve. And a few minutes later it was indeed cool enough for me to unscrew the valve. But before I attached one of the other valves on the windowsill, I noticed that both of them were missing the adjustment caps that keep steam from coming out freely, so they might not be an improvement at all. Re-attached the old valve and noticed that it was pointing down, the body of the valve an inch lower than where it attached to the radiator. And that the writing on the valve was upside-down, suggesting that the valve really should be pointing up instead. So I unscrewed it until it came free, rotated it another half turn, and screwed it back in, hoping that there were two or more parallel threads and it would now reach tightness pointing up. No dice: it ended up in the same downward-pointing position as before. Maybe if I added some plumber's tape around the threads it would reach tightness a little sooner. No, that didn't seem to make any difference: it still wanted to point down. So I just loosened it half a turn, figuring the plumber's tape would keep too much steam from coming out through the screw threads, replaced the drip bowl under the valve, and turned the heat back on. (Did I mention it was 12°F outside?)
An hour later, no water in the drip bowl. Bedtime, no water in the drip bowl. This morning, no water in the drip bowl. Did I actually fix the problem by just loosening the valve half a turn?
Of course, we still have the problem that there's no knob to control the bedroom radiator. But that's the single radiator we need the most; we never turn it off except to try to fix it. Another radiator in the kitchen had its ancient plastic knob break off years ago, and it hasn't been a problem.
The "right" answer is probably to replace the whole radiator, as we did in the spare bedroom as part of its renovation two years ago: modern radiators are smaller and work better than these 50-plus-year-old ones. But that's not happening for the next few days, probably not the next few months. And I was planning to put in an electric heat pump anyway, on the theory that they're more energy-efficient and don't generate CO2, much less CO, inside the house, and they double as air conditioners.
Half an hour later the dripping started again, I ran upstairs to see what was going on, and saw water dripping from the radiator's steam-release valve. That's not supposed to happen: it's supposed to be only steam coming out, and not much of that because most of it is supposed to condense exothermically inside the radiator and drip back down to the boiler. I ran to the kitchen and got another bowl to put under the steam-release valve. (This is a little tricky because the edge of the bowl has to be low enough to fit under the valve, high enough and sloped enough to clear another protrusion on the radiator a few inches lower, and the bowl has to be large enough to hold a possibly significant amount of water. I tried three different bowls/pans before being reasonably satisfied.) Still not sure why it's suddenly started doing this, but I thought catching the water at the valve should prevent further ceiling damage.
An hour or two later, sitting in the spare bedroom/office upstairs, I heard water splashing. There was water not only dripping but spewing out of the steam release valve, and the bowl had collected maybe half a gallon of water. I mopped up the excess on the floor, emptied and replaced the bowl. Then noticed that there happened to be two spare steam release valves on the windowsill, left over from the last radiator crisis. What if I just replace the release valve with one of those? The situation is unlikely to get worse: as I recall from the last crisis, we might get less heat in the bedroom, but we'll still get some, and we won't have water seeping through the floorboards.
I reached down to shut off the radiator so it wouldn't steam-scald me when I changed the valve. The knob wouldn't turn. I went to the kitchen to get some cloth pot-holders. The knob still wouldn't turn. I went to the basement to get the Channel-Lock pliers and a monkey wrench, at least one of which should do the job. The knob turned, reluctantly, about a quarter of a turn before breaking in half. Just the 50-plus-year-old plastic knob, no damage to the plumbing, but now it was going to be even harder to turn the radiator off and on again.
I turned the thermostat down to 50°F, effectively shutting off all the radiators in the house, so this one would cool enough for me to change its valve. And a few minutes later it was indeed cool enough for me to unscrew the valve. But before I attached one of the other valves on the windowsill, I noticed that both of them were missing the adjustment caps that keep steam from coming out freely, so they might not be an improvement at all. Re-attached the old valve and noticed that it was pointing down, the body of the valve an inch lower than where it attached to the radiator. And that the writing on the valve was upside-down, suggesting that the valve really should be pointing up instead. So I unscrewed it until it came free, rotated it another half turn, and screwed it back in, hoping that there were two or more parallel threads and it would now reach tightness pointing up. No dice: it ended up in the same downward-pointing position as before. Maybe if I added some plumber's tape around the threads it would reach tightness a little sooner. No, that didn't seem to make any difference: it still wanted to point down. So I just loosened it half a turn, figuring the plumber's tape would keep too much steam from coming out through the screw threads, replaced the drip bowl under the valve, and turned the heat back on. (Did I mention it was 12°F outside?)
An hour later, no water in the drip bowl. Bedtime, no water in the drip bowl. This morning, no water in the drip bowl. Did I actually fix the problem by just loosening the valve half a turn?
Of course, we still have the problem that there's no knob to control the bedroom radiator. But that's the single radiator we need the most; we never turn it off except to try to fix it. Another radiator in the kitchen had its ancient plastic knob break off years ago, and it hasn't been a problem.
The "right" answer is probably to replace the whole radiator, as we did in the spare bedroom as part of its renovation two years ago: modern radiators are smaller and work better than these 50-plus-year-old ones. But that's not happening for the next few days, probably not the next few months. And I was planning to put in an electric heat pump anyway, on the theory that they're more energy-efficient and don't generate CO2, much less CO, inside the house, and they double as air conditioners.
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Ouch.
And you still have some plaster and flooring damage to take care of, I assume. Home ownership is full of adventures. :-(
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We were planning to have the living room ceiling replaced anyway -- the opposite corner of it still has visible staining from a leak during the bathroom renovation, years ago -- so I guess we'll find out when we do that.
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Oh, that makes things easier. Dealing with plaster damage is a PITA, and (I'm told) if it's plaster you really do need to deal with below-the-surface water damage or it gets worse.
I guess you'll learn more about the path the water took from the radiator to the drip point when you pull out that ceiling. If it didn't leave a trail on the floor above, well, it had to get there somehow... good luck! At least parquet tiles are easier to pull up selectively than some other flooring would be, so if there is any subfloor damage you're not in "redo the room" territory. Whew.
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I asked how old the radiator was, and the plumber said "Age of the house," which is a bit over a century. Which probably means the knob handle too was a hundred years old too, not fifty.