Dickinson Hall
Two Pipe Steam Radiator

Dickinson Hall is heated with a two-pipe steam system. Steam from the boiler is piped around the building, eventually connected to every radiator in every room.
Sensors located throughout the building monitor several room temperatures and report that information to an Energy Management Computer System also located in the basement. This information is checked against the heating program designed for the Dickinson environment, and the boiler responds to maintain the spaces at Setpoint ( the equivalent of a Thermostat setting). Room temperatures and boiler status are transmitted to the Central Heating Plant via the college network, where the Operating Engineer when required can monitor data and issue overrides as required.
Steam radiators are located in every room and are capable of limited control. They are convection dependent devices and require adequate air flow to work properly. A covered or blocked radiator will not function efficiently.
Each radiator has a steam valve that permits steam to enter the radiator where the energy is released to the cast iron sections. Most of these valves have no “control top” and allow steam to freely enter the radiator when the boiler runs. Room s with too much heat can request the installation of a self-contained element that reacts to room temperature and allows for some local adjustment. Once installed, rotating the valve top counter-clockwise opens the valve to HIGH and increases the desired room setpoint.. The radiator will HEAT to this temperature when the steam is available. When the valve is turned clockwise all the way to it’s stop, the valve is LOW and little heat will result as the boiler runs to heat the rest of the building. If you leave your steam valve LOW and leave your room, your room will get the minimum heat needed to maintain your room at a comfortable temperature. When you turn the valve on, there is no guarantee that steam will be available at that time. Thus no guarantee that your room will begin to receive
heat immediately, and in fact it may be several degrees cooler than any rooms that had their valves at a HIGH setting during the same time period or have no control top installed. This valve can be positioned anywhere between HIGH and LOW, which will control the rate at which the radiator produces heat.
There is a Steam Trap at the opposite end of the radiator, and this Trap reacts to steam and condensate. When the hot steam reaches the steam trap’s temperature sensitive element it closes, thereby trapping the hot steam in the radiator where it must surrender it’s Btu’s to the surrounding radiator. The hot radiator warms the nearby room air and convection moves the warm air around the room to heat the space. As the steam loses thermal energy it condenses and the cooler condensate is allowed to pass out of the radiator and into the return piping system to be re-used by the boiler to make steam again.

Data provided by MHC Facilities Management Department