Facilities

nightlightsnyny

         New to site and hoping for some guidance. I am a new home owner and have a 50 year old American Standard boiler with convection radiators throughout the house built into the walls. I am looking at upgrading my boiler to a Peerless and would like to replace the convection radiators with Runtal wall mounted units. To save some money I would like to remove the old units before installing the new Boiler. Any thoughts on a Peerless boiler? How would I drain the system to remove the old convection radiators?Do I need to drain it inorder to do this? Could I disconnect a couple of them and reconnect the boiler to work while I replace them? Apologize for the long wind. Any help would be great



Thanks

Rod

Need more Info

Hi-  Need to know some more information on your system. Are we talking about a steam or a hotwater system? If steam, is it a one pipe or two pipe system?  What type of fuel are you planning using - natural gas or oil?  I can see the need for a new boiler but why do you feel you need new radiators? Using the old radiators are pretty "bulletproof" and just need cleaning and adjusting to bring them back into optimum operating condition.



  You need to do your homework first and do some engineering calculations or have someone competent do it for you as the new radiators would need to be sized to the heat loss and then the new boiler sized to match the steam need of the radiators.  In the case of just replacing the boiler you need to measure the EDR of the radiators and match the boiler to that.  As for boiler manufacturers, Peerless makes very good boilers ( I have a Peerless) but the optimum boiler depends on what fuel you are using as some makes,sizes and  models are better with gas and others better with oil. Also depending what your system's steam needs, are one manufacturer may have a model boiler that more closely matches the size your system needs than another.  Tell us a little more about you system (pictures of the boiler and radiators always help) and we will be better to direct you to the sources of information you will need.

- Rod

nightlightsnyny

New boiler and Radiators

Rod,

  Thnak you for the reply. I have oil and will be staying with that. I will get back with photos of the boiler and some measurment. Current covction radiotor just don't heat the house.



Thanks and enjoy the weekend

D

Rod

"The Deadmen"

Hi- You'll see mentioned the phrase "the Deadmen" a lot on this website. This refers to the men that originally installed these systems many years ago.  As they had a high level of competence the systems originally operated very well. Today when one of these old heating systems isn't operating satisfactorily it  is usually due to an accumulation over the years of a lack of maintenance combined with incompetent people making "mickey mouse" changes ("fixes") to the system. The first thing one should do is bring the system back to its original operating status by fixing/replacing non operational components and removing "Mickey Mouse fixes" and then determining  what improvements (like a new boiler) need to be made.  We can presume the convectors originally worked well so the first thing to do would be to find out why they apparently aren't heating well now.

You didn't mention what type of system you have, Steam or Hot Water and if steam, whether it is one pipe or two pipe. (Take a picture of the piping leading to your convectors and your boiler and we'll have a better idea as to what you have.)

You might want to look in the Resources section at the top of the page as there are a lot of good articles there.

- Rod

nightlightsnyny

New Boiler

Ron,

     I currently have a hot water boiler oile fired and want to replace it with a more energy efficient unit(current one is 50 years old).I will be keeping the oil and  I am looking at a Peerless unit with a Becket burner. I am wondering what OI can do with the current convection radiators that are installed in my home. I have attached some photos.

Thank you

Charlie from wmass

If you have convectors on hot water

I think you have air issues. those auto vents I would replace with manual vents and get the air bled out. I would also get a new boiler but that is anothe rmatter.