"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article , "Jay-T"
wrote:
I bought a small used cast iron radiator about 6 months (about 12 inches
wide by 24 inches high). I finally connected it up to the hot water
heating
system in an apartment that I will be renting out.
[...]
At the top of the radiator on one end in the corner there is a flat head
screw going into the radiator. I am guessing that I could try taking out
the flat head screw and replacing it with a bleeder valve there. Does
that
sound about right?

Maybe -- if it's the right thread. What will you do if it's not?

I am hesitant to mess with the screw.

You should be.

I don't know how hard it will be to
get out although my first try broke a screwdriver tip before anything
happened with the screw.

Yeah, and it's a damn good thing you did, too.

I am thinking about heating the screw with a torch
first before trying to get it out.

You should be thinking about draining the system first...

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

You're missing something *very* important: right now, the system is hot
and
pressurized. What's going to happen if you succeed in getting that screw
out?

Leave it alone until May. At the minimum, you need to turn the boiler off,
let
the system cool, depressurize it, and drain it down below the level of
that
screw, unless you enjoy scalding-hot baths and spewing water all over your
floor.

At this point, you have no idea if the hole that screw threads into is the
right size for a standard bleeder valve or not -- and until you know,
you'd
better not have hot water, under pressure, at the level of that hole.

I also thought that "there oughta be something" -- like a piece of small
tubing etc. -- that I could attach to the existing bleeder valve from the
inside that could be fed from there up to the top of the inside of the
radiator. I assume that no such thing exists, but that seems like it
would
be a way to bleed the air from the top of the radiator rather than from
the
middle.

Think about it a while. That will never work: you'll let air *in*, not
out.

Thanks. I'm not too worried about trying this. The system is not under
that much pressure and the screw is at the top of the radiator, whereas the
existing bleeder valve is halfway up the side of the heater. I can easily
just open the bleeder valve first to relieve any pressure. There are no
radiators above this one or even above the bleeder valve height, so I don't
need to worry about water from above draining out of that bleeder port.