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Re: Heating an Old House: Gas Heat Options
Jamie,
I would have loved to restore such a house, but too much **** had taken place over the decades in this house.
I am a carpenter by trade, and I have put thousands into repairing, replacing and adding structural elements where previous renovations had gone wrong.
I’m past the worst, and now I have to thread the needle of keeping original character while adding modern HVAC systems.
Re: Heating an Old House: Gas Heat Options
Yes, if it's post and beam running piping in the wall is a practical impossibily. However, may I point out that in the restoration business — not the gut and rehab with drywall or some such travesty — the accepted and normal way of running either steam or hot water heat is carefully and neatly run pipes visible in the rooms they go through. This is an honest statement of what was done to bring the house to more modern conditions without fakery. This is also done when adding a bathroom on an upper floor — although there it is more common to enclose the pipes with a well-crafted wooden chase to match the existing trim.
Re: 2" vent stack
The prints you have been posting are very interesting. Great to look at. However I would not rely on them as they are one hundred years old, may not be "as builts" and many changes both known and un-known have surely taken place over the years. Its usually best to rely on what you have in place, and work each issue individually.
Intplm.
Re: Interrupted vs intermittent Primary control
ISTR this was done to bring the oil terminology in line with that used for gas. So, "constant" would be a pilot light that stays on all the time, "intermittent" would be a pilot (gas) or ignitor (gas or oil) that comes on at the start of a firing cycle and shuts off at the end, as on a spark-to-pilot or hot-surface gas ignition system or an oil system where the spark stays on the whole time the burner runs, and "interrupted" is where the ignition only stays on when lighting the fire.
Re: New Century House with Two Pipe Steam - Questions
Wow. Just wow. Not only is it a vapour system — and an early one — but everything is still more or less there! You must get LAOSH, and you will find your system, or at least the basics for it, in there.
I would suggest, in this order:
First, check all the traps. Any radiator which isn't heating the trap is suspect. If you find a radiator where the outlet from the trap is close to steam hot, that one is suspect too. Replace any traps which you even think are bad. Both Tunstall and Barnes & Jones make innards to fit them.
Second, you can try to get the valves to move — and WD-40 is as good as anything — but if the don't, don't fret it. If the traps are working they are in the nice to have but not critical category.
Third, buy a good low pressure pressure gauge — to 0 to 3 psig — and figure out where to put it. And put it. Best bet is going to be to put it on a T off of whatever pipe connects the vapourstat (which is set properly, by the way) to the boiler. Clean out that connection which you are at it. That will tell you what pressure you are really at, at which point you decide whether the vapourstat need to be replaed.
Now. Take a deep breath and find you system, or one as like it as you can, in LAOSH and study it. Go down to the basement and study the piping. Go back and study the diagram and texts some more. Until you begin to think you know how that thing worked.
You are going to be the expert on it, so take some time to really be the expert!
Don't do ANYTHING other than those three steps above until you are feeling pretty good about the system. Then work on bringing it back to its former glory.
One further thougth. That boiler. What condition is it in? If it's in good shape, leave it for the time being. Yes it is using more fuel that a new one might. But… for now leave it. However, when you do have to replace it, take care: the water line on that boiler is quite high off the floor, and you must match that water line with any new boiler — which may put it on something of a pedestal. Do it.
Re: New Century House with Two Pipe Steam - Questions
You have the correct metering valves on your radiators. The canned ham @EBEBRATT-Ed refers to is the black barnes and jones return trap with the sight glass. This:
Also, what's with the top pipe here? Is there a plug in the end?
Are the 7 non heating rads on the same main, or randomly distrubuted?
Lastly, how long does it take the good rads to heat?
Re: After how many oil tank fills do I do a oil boiler clean out / tune up?
Oil gets a bad rap for being dirty and soot and some of that was true in the old days. But better some soot than CO poisoning from gas.
I am NOT saying oil can't make CO. Its a fossil fuel so it can. But in almost all cases with oil the soot will be the evidence of poor combustion where with gas you usually get no such indication.
In the old days it was a Bacharach (or Dwyer) wet kit. They still sell them. It was in the Bacharach kit like a plastic hollow dumbbell with a fluid in it that was replaceable. They made models that measured O2 or CO2. They also made a "monixor" for measuring C0 that used a 1 time glass tube and a smoke gun for measuring smoke.
A sample tube went in the flue pipe and attached to the dumbbell. The hose had a squeeze bulb on it that you would squeeze 18 times to that a flue gas sample and put it in the dumbbell. Then you turned the dumbbell over several times to mix the fluid and flue gas sample
They worked and were reasonably accurate. The problem was it was time consuming. Very difficult to get enough run time (especially during the summer) to be able to test without overheating the house.
You would frequently turn up the high limit to get more run time but then you would be off on limit.
See the attached
Re: Custom made radiant heat panel?
Hi, You might get more output with solar panel tubing. Just guessing though.
Yours, Larry
Re: After how many oil tank fills do I do a oil boiler clean out / tune up?
@jesmed1 Same thing happened to us. I was about 12 years old at the time. Turned out to be a raccoon in the base of the chimney. Insurance covered all the cleaning. It's called smoke damage. That's one of the thing that fire insurance covers.
