Bad Steam Traps May Be Killing Your Home’s System

Call the plumber! These are never words you want to be calling out in a panic. But faulty steam vents and bad thermostatic valves can easily lead to these words being uttered at the wrong time. Steam trap testing ensures that your steam traps, including those with thermostatic valves, are working properly and in turn, save you lots of money that could be lost to costly repairs or inefficient systems.

There are various steam trap parts that are integral to your home’s hot water system. Ensuring that the equipment and components in your home are high quality can help to reduce steam losses toless than 1%. Conducting a steam trap survey can determine the quality of your system. This involves checking the steam vents, whether they are thermostatic valves or thermodynamic valves, steam valves and other steam trap parts to ensure the system’s health.

If the system is in poor condition, as much as 20% of steam can be lost as it leaves the central boiler plant and moves through the heating system. A proactive assessment program can help ensure that you don’t lose all that steam. Leaky thermostatic valves can malfunction dangerously, but the loss of steam from inefficient thermostatic valves and other steam traps can also produce as much as $8,000 in steam waste every year!

How would you know if your steam trap maintenance is up to par? It’s not as if every normal homeowner knows their way around thermostatic valves. As a rule of thumb, if it has been three to five years since the last known servicing to your steam system was performed, that is an indication that the system should be checked, as typically 15-30% of systems installed that long ago have already failed.