What You're Actually Working With Here
The book covers calculations for low pressure steam and hot water boiler systems. The ASME codes it references have gone through multiple revisions since the original publication, but the underlying thermodynamic principles haven't changed. What you'll find inside is essentially a reference for sizing, pressure drop, and heat transfer calculations that field engineers still pull out when they need something faster than running a full simulation. I've used this on actual job sites where someone needed a quick check on whether a given header size would handle the flow, or whether a condensate line was undersized. The tables and methods are straightforward. They're not flashy. But they work.
Getting Your Hands on Low Pressure Boilers By Frederick M Steingress
Older copies show up on eBay and AbeBooks regularly, usually between fifteen and forty dollars depending on condition. The original edition came out through Ronald Press back in the 1950s, and later printings exist. If you're working from a library or university copy, check the copyright date before you rely on any code-referencing sections, because the ASME standards it cites have been superseded multiple times. The math still holds. The code cross-references will point you at outdated sections. Digital versions circulate on torrent sites and document-sharing platforms, but I wouldn't recommend relying on a pixelated scan for anything involving table lookups. Reading a misaligned decimal from a low-res PDF image has ruined more estimation timelines than I care to count.
How the Calculation Methods Actually Work
The book is organized around a few core problem types. Sizing pipe runs for steam distribution. Calculating pressure drop across bends, valves, and fittings. Estimating heat transfer rates for different boiler configurations. Condensate return line sizing. Each section gives you the formula, a worked example, and usually a table to interpolate from. Here's the thing most people skip: the examples use nominal sizes and standard conditions. Real systems don't run at standard conditions. If you're working with a plant that runs at altitude, or with steam that's not quite dry, you need to apply correction factors. Steingress doesn't cover every edge case. You'll need to supplement with current ASME tables or a piping handbook for things like superheated steam corrections or two-phase flow in condensate lines. I once sized a condensate return system using the book's methods for a retrofit project. The calculations came out clean. The system had a 4-inch return header, three trap stations, and about 250 feet of vertical lift. Everything checked out on paper. When we commissioned it, we got waterhammer in the upper runs every time the load dropped below sixty percent. The issue wasn't the sizing. It was that the traps were discharging into a common header that was running partially full during low load, creating a liquid seal that blocked vapor passage. We solved it by installing a flashing tank upstream of the return header and re-routing the upper trap discharges to a separate header. The book would have caught the flow rate issue. It wouldn't have flagged the partial-full condition because that's a system dynamics problem, not a steady-state calculation problem.
Where This Book Falls Short
Let's be clear about what it doesn't cover. There's nothing on modern controls, boiler management systems, or emission calculations. If you're dealing with NOx limits or continuous emissions monitoring, you'll need supplemental references. The hydraulics treatment assumes single-phase flow for the most part, and the steam tables it references are older generations. The thermodynamic data is accurate enough for general work, but if you need precision within a fraction of a percent, you're better off with a current property database. The book also doesn't address modern materials and fabrication practices beyond what was common at the time of writing. Welded versus riveted construction, newer tube materials, advanced water treatment approaches — none of that is in here. It's a calculation reference, not a design manual for contemporary boiler systems.
Practical Tips That Actually Matter
When using the pressure drop tables, always verify whether the values are given per hundred feet of equivalent length or per actual foot. Some editions mix the two conventions without making it obvious. I learned that the hard way on a project where the contractor billed us for extra pipe because the estimated pressure drop was off by a factor of ten. It turned out we'd read a per-hundred-feet table as if it were per-foot. Twenty minutes of re-reading the table heading would have saved a lot of arguing. For steam distribution calculations, pay attention to the velocity limits the book recommends. Running steam too fast through a header creates erosion in elbows and excessive noise. The sweet spot for most low pressure industrial systems is somewhere between eight thousand and ten thousand feet per minute in the main headers, dropping lower in branch connections. Going slower saves you trouble with maintenance and complaints from operators about noisy plants. When calculating boiler feedwater requirements, factor in blowdown. The book touches on it, but it's easy to miss during a quick calculation. Modern boilers with higher cycle of concentration requirements can blow down anywhere from two to eight percent of feedwater flow depending on water quality and treatment approach. If you're sizing a feed tank or a make-up line, leaving blowdown out of the equation will understate your requirements by a noticeable margin.
How It Fits Into Current Practice
Most engineers today run these calculations through software packages. HYSYS, AFT Arrow, even Excel spreadsheets built from current code tables. The book is useful when you need a second opinion on a result, or when you're doing a preliminary estimate before committing to a full simulation. It's also one of the few references that walks through the hand calculation method step by step, which helps you understand what the software is actually doing instead of treating it as a black box. There's still a place for the manual approach. When the software crashes, when you're on site without a laptop, when you need to explain to a junior engineer why a particular pipe size was chosen — having the underlying method in your head matters. The book gives you that foundation. Just don't treat it as a complete design guide for modern systems. It's a tool, not a bible.
