Heating Dilemma

JL_3

Looking for some advice. I bought an older home (90+ years)over 4000 sq. feet. Old windows, poor insulation etc.. I think the current system is a converted old gravity hot water system. There is an expansion tank, circulator, and rads have no air vents, so I am assuming it is converted gravity given age of the house. The boiler is a Weil Mclain with service record going back to early 60's, looks like converted coal but i am not sure. Nice old cast iron radiators throughout the house but looks like they added some electric space heaters to supplement. No central air but we plan to get this installed immediately. The GC is pushing a forced air furnace and claims that they can add a whole house humidifier or use hydronic air handlers to deal with the dryness. His view is that given that we need to duct it anyway for the A/C that it is easier to go with the air. We have never had forced air only steam and hot water. My question is whether simply replacing the boiler and leaving the existing piping in place will make a meaningful difference in comfort. Given the space heaters my gut tells me the existing sytem wasn't working very well. I would prefer to not go the forced air route but it might make more sense. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Unknown

three words

Don't do it! Fire any contractors that tell you to changeover to forced air system. Just about every customers I know were were not happey after they did the changeover. Get a real hydronic heating system to go over the heat loss of your home and make it comfortable again. Where are you located?

Steamhead (in transit)

Agreed

that guy saw your radiators and visions of dollar-signs are dancing in his head. You'll pay him a LOT to tear everything out, he'll scrap everything and make more money there, and he won't have to live with the mess he'll put in. Don't even bother with him, he makes everyone in the business look bad.

Where are you located? Can you post some pics of the boiler and some radiators?

"Steamhead"

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Unknown

a boiler replacement, with reset control, and TRV valves on the radiators, and you'll be pretty close to ideal.

Unknown

Hotair is NOT the way to go! You really don't need more air drafts as these old houses provide enough of those already! Since you're are familiar with steam and hot water heating, you are already familiar with the benefits of warm radiant heating.

I think you probably just need to update your present system. You have to consider that the heating systems in older houses were installed by experts and were quite adequate for heating the house even with single pane windows and minimal insulation.

What usually happens is, that over time, the heating system has degraded as proper whole system maintenance wasn't done. It is the burner/boiler which usually gets the attention while the rest of the system is neglected. This is especially true if the maintenance is done by a fuel company as they are burner specialists but usually know very little about the older steam or hotwater systems. If they are forced to do some work on the system it is usually pretty "mickey mouse", reflecting their lack of experience.

What you need is a good hydronic (hot water) specialist that is familiar with older systems to evaluate your system and do the upgrading. Restoring your system and with the addition of a modern high efficiency boiler and controls with give you a very comfortable economic system.

I have an old 3 story house and several years ago was faced with a similar situation such as you are going through now. Everyone wanted me to replace my steam system with something more "modern". I still thank my lucky stars that I kept the steam.

As was mentioned I'd post your location and some pictures of your system. There are a lot of good hydronic pros that come on to this board and they can give advice and you maybe able to find one locally to you that could look at your system.

- Rod

JL_3

Thank you for the comments. I attached a picture of the boiler and one of the larger radiators. Don't actually own the house just yet, so unfortunately no other photos. HVAC sub is recommending boiler replacement but adding hydornic air handlers since we are going to do the A/C anyhow. Tells me the hot water heating system will still work but that the air handlers use a hot water feed from the boiler to create hot air through the vents as well and this will allow for zoning which we currently don't have with existing system. Anyone have a view on hydronic air handlers? House has 3 floors and looks like only one zone from what I can tell. We are in Nassau County New York.

Steamhead (in transit)

That's definitely

an old gravity system- you can tell by the pipe sizes. The circulator was added later. You will find little manually-operated air bleeds at the top of one end of each radiator. This is the system I have in my own house.

There is absolutely no way hydronic air handlers ("Hydro-air") will ever equal the comfort level or efficiency of your radiators. And you can zone room-by-room with thermostatic radiator valves as shown in the attached pic. Show that guy the door, he doesn't put your interests first, and from his attitude I doubt he'd be able to properly install a boiler in your system.

A new boiler will make that system sing. There are boilers that can exceed 90% efficiency but some of the cheaper ones have had longevity problems. Also these units cannot exhaust into a standard chimney, so they must go thru the sidewall, and that involves a lot of clearance issues such as distance from windows, snow accumulation etc.

If you can't go thru the sidewall, a wet-base power-burner unit like the one in the pic is more efficient than the standard atmospheric gas boiler.

Either type of boiler can also run an indirect tank heater for your hot faucet water.

If you're in Nassau County, the guy to call is Matt Sweeney, owner of Triple Crown P&H in New Hyde Park. Here's his info, tell him we sent you:

http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=210&Step=30



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Unknown

I'm behind

Im behind on Steamhead 100% on this one.

Larry Weingarten

I'll add...

... Get a blower door test. Find and fix the air leaks. Then do a really good job of insulating. Think about a cool roof. Now look at heating and cooling loads. That sequence seems to be the best.

Yours, Larry

Mitch_6

If you can

locate all the drops from the radiators individually. Then install a mod con boiler. Zone the house into smaller sections by floor and then by common living areas. Cast iron should work great on lower reset temperatures. Zoning cuts fuel bill more and also helps take care of balance issues.

Typically the cast iron is over sized to begin with, however you should do a formal heat loss to make sure. Insulate and seal everything you can. Use the AC as a stand alone system. If you need humidity that can be stand alone also and don't go cheap unless you want to use disposable room units.

We have done several jobs with old fashion looking cast iron radiators throughout the house. But total hi tech mod cons in the boiler room and they work great.

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Matthew Grallert

I ofcourse agree that the hotair dude should be shown the door and you need to keep those beautiful radiators for all the reasons already mentioned. We're all on the edge of our seats here:) So please keep us posted on your decisions. Good luck
Peace
Matthew