cold downstairs/hot upstairs

My neighbor has steam radiator heating, and the house is cold down and hot up. Do these need to be bleed or what? If so how do we go about doing this?

Mary

 

Mary, there's nothing to 'bleed' on a steam system. I know that much about steam ... beyond that, I'm pretty much 'steam stupid' ... but:

Are there adjustable 'vents' on the radiators ? Perhaps these need some 'tweaking' ...

Did this problem start all of a sudden ? or has it been an on-going issue for some time ?

One of the steam gurus will be by soon I'm sure to give you some real answers...

 

I'm no steam guru either but to further what Trooper said about adjustable air vents: Radiators often have small devices near the top on the opposite end of where the steam comes in. Some of these devices have numbers around them near the top. By loosening the screw on top you can turn the upper part of the vent to a higher number for faster venting or lower number to slow it down. The faster a radiator vents air when steam enters, the faster the radiator will heat. If your neighbor's house has such vents, you would want to turn the upstairs ones to a lower number & the downstairs to a higher.

 

I've kept my steam-stupid mouth shut but one suggestion is to maybe check out the books for sale at heatinghelp especially one called "so you've got steam heat". My suspicion is that they'll need to replace some of the vents unless this was triggered by something that they've done to the system, but I'm steam stupid and destined to stay that way.