Heating an old church

hrodriguez411

My name is Henry Rodriguez, I am one of the board members of Jersey City Mission Church located in NJ. It is historical church built in the early 1900.

We are currently looking to upgrade our heating system to something more efficient and energy friendly.

I like would to know if anyone can help guide me in the right direction.

If you visit the homepage of our website (www.misionjerseycity.com) you can see some pictures of the interior of our church. The ceiling is high and keeping the congregation warm during winter months becomes quite a challenge.

Steamhead

What system do you have now?

hrodriguez411

We currently have a gas furnace blows hot air.

Solid_Fuel_Man

Hot air is the worst for large high ceilings. Radiant being the best, but likely the most expensive to retrofit.

John Mills_5

Ceiling fans!!!! 1 furnace or many?

Jamie Hall

Agreed, @John Mills ! That's by far the cheapest and quickest way to improve the efficiency of heating in a church -- or, for that matter, any other building with a high ceiling.

They come in quite a variety of types and sizes and looks, and are very unobtrusive and quiet.

For what it's worth, our church uses two of them (it's smaller) and they make a tremendous difference.

Odds are that the OP has at least one parishioner who can install them -- legally -- himself or herself, too.

The next improvement which isn't all that expensive is to make sure that the air is going where you want it to, and not where you don't. All the ductwork tight? No leaks? Vents open where they should be, and closed where they are not needed? All filters clean (and replaced as needed)?

Now we leap the ladder in cost... rapidly. The next possible improvement is to boost the efficiency of the heat source. The less expensive way to do that is to see if a more efficient furnace is available. It may well be, if the existing one is more than a decade old. One wants to be rather careful about the cost to benefit ratio, of course -- will you really save enough in fuel to pay for the new installation? Another possible upside, though, to a new furnace is that you may be able to split the system, if there are spaces in the church which are used at different times, such as the sanctuary vs. small meeting rooms or office space, etc.

Then at the top end, with the highest efficiency -- and cost -- the OP could look into a heat pump, or a heat pump for the sanctuary and mini-splits for the small spaces and offices etc. Again, one should be very careful of cost to benefit on such an installation.

JUGHNE

Have a smaller (1969) church that wanted paddle fans. It was a 3" solid plank/ceiling/roof. No attic or insulation. I would have been the go to guy for this installation.....not excited about it. This is the Sanctuary area with a single high wall cold air return, supplies in floor slab.

The most logical thing seemed to use the furnace fans to move the upper air down. HW 8000 thermostat has a fan recirculate function that randomly cycles the blower about 1/3 of the time. This removes any residual heat from the cathedral section of the building and with the in-floor supplies "warms" the slab slightly.
The programing section of the T-stat is locked, anyone can over ride the temp settings but it will revert back to scheduled temps with in 4 hours. The furnace blowers are fairly loud, the recirculate program is not in use during church services. The program intent is to over heat the building before services and then drop the temp setting a couple degrees before the sermon starts. (easier to sleep ) The building is used for maybe 8 hours a week. The set back is to 55 when not in use.

The same set up was used in the Fellowship Hall. Here the furnace recirculate is more important as the water pipes are under floor with the ductwork. Set back is 55 also.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@JUGHNE , you probably doing all you can with it + when the church is full the body heat helps.

Not crazy about the high wall cold air return, the cold air would be at floor level.

Had a church in Hartford, Ct years ago with the Iron Fireman "Select Temp" with the miniature unpowered fan coils on steam.

That was a great system for a church

@hrodriguez411

We redid a church and used fan coils around the perimiter with a hot water boiler.

That building had a false wall around the outside (which we think was an old brick air plenum) that we used to run pex tubing in between the boiler and the fan coils.

It worked well, fan noise can be an issue in a church

EBEBRATT-Ed

@hrodriguez411 did this church originally have an old central ventilating fan in the basement??

hrodriguez411

First I want to thank everyone here for all the valuable information provided so far. This forum has been great blessing and I am very thankful.

We previously had 2 small steam boilers constantly running in the past. They were very old boilers and constantly having issues, breaking down and leaving the congregation cold during Sunday Service and bible classes. Also being that we had the furnace working all the time our PSEG bill was over $3000 every month. Way to high for our congregation. We finally decided to replace them with the current hot air gas furnace ( 3 in total ) hoping that this would be sufficient in maintaining comfortable temperatures.

We currently have 1 gas furnace for the large meeting room in the ground floor. It now stays comfortable but still a little on the cooler side. In the ground floor we also have 2 bath rooms, 1 kitchen, 2 offices and 5 rooms that do not get any heat at all. Constantly cold during Winter months. We use small space heaters in some areas to keep from losing any toes.

The sanctuary is on level 1. It currently has 2 gas furnace. Running at full capacity it does not warm up the sanctuary enough. There are also 2 additional rooms on level 1.

I have attached some additional pictures to help you visualize our current setup. I would like to have a contractor come in, someone with the knowledge to help us get to a place where our members and visitors can come in and take there coats off and feel comfortable.

Steamhead

You would have done much, much better to just properly fix or replace the steam boilers rather than waste your money on forced-air. Your current "system" will never work well. Forced-air is the worst heating method anyone has come up with.

Fortunately, we have two excellent Steam Men in Jersey: @Dave0176 and @EzzyT . Since it looks like all or most of the steam system is still there, one of them should be able to get it working without the high fuel bills.

EzzyT

@hrodriguez411 send me a private message and we can set up a consultation