I need to rip a baseboard heater out: the cabinet, the copper piping, everything. There is no longer a need to heat that room (reasons: outside the scope of this question).
This is fuel oil with an oil burner that moves hot water through copper pipes that are placed on a big loop. Here is a basic drawing of the piping:
I believe the overarching steps here are:
- Turn the circuit breakers off for my oil burner and the zone valves (I have 2 of them but only 1 is pictured above); that way the valves can't possibly call for heat, and the oil burner can't service the heat if it wanted to
- After my zone valve in the drawing, there is a T-branch in the copper piping and one of the branches is what services the baseboard I need to rip out. But that baseboard is daisy chained on a circuit with other, downstream ones that I want to keep. There is a gate valve on this branch. After the water moves through all of the baseboards (including the one I am tearing out) it comes back and returns to the oil burner, and there is another gate valve there near the return. So I think I can isolate the entire baseboard "loop"'s water supply by shutting both gate valves off.
- Now I can cut the copper piping out after the inbound gate valve (that is now shut off) and before the outbound gate valve (which is also shut off). This is illustrated by the 2 Xs and dotted line in my drawing. The baseboard loop is now completely detached from the rest of the plumbing of the house.
- Let the pipes I have just cut drain into large 55-gallon containers and pump them out of the house. It is important to note that there are no bleed valves on the baseboard cabinets anywhere in this loop, so I'm all ears on ideas to drain this loop properly! My only thought would be to (since I'm getting rid of the baseboard and piping anyways) just drill some holes in the piping at its highest point.
- Do the demolition; cut the pipes, remove the baseboard cabinets, return all the copper for some well-earned moola, etc.
- I now have two exposed, opened ends of copper piping: the place after the first zone valve where I cut out the piping leading up to the baseboard. And the place before the 2nd T branch where I cut out the piping leading back from the baseboard. Connect these two pipes together (my dotted line).
- Turn both gate valves back on, allowing water to flow back through the new pipe I just installed
- Turn the power back on to the oil burner and then the zone valves
I think these are the main steps, but please keep me honest. I think one major piece I'm missing is how to purge air out of the line, as I will be introducing quite a bit of air with the new pipe I'm adding, and I don't want the system to become air-bound. But I'm unsure of how to do this purging, and I'm also not sure what else I might be missing.
Here is what the piping looks like after Gate Valve B, just before the water returns to the oil burner:
To my untrained eyes, it seems like this is a series of valves and fittings meant for the purpose of draining or filling water back into the system, purging air, etc.
I can confirm that in between the oil burner and the Zone Valve, there is an expansion tank and an air line separator that is functioning, so that may help as well.
I have a transfer pump and hoses. And lots of buckets. I'm just not seeing the forest through the trees as to how to use all of these together to make sure my system does not become airbound.
Can anyone help point me in the right direction here? Thanks in advance!