Never have seen this before

Greg Maxwell

A customer sent me an email, looking to see if I had ever seen this before. In my 35 years in the trades, this is a new one.

STEVEusaPA

Looks like just a coil to me. I've seen them in the back of fireplaces in the basement to heat up water.

JUGHNE

My guess would be it is an indirect radiator....was enclosed in brick plenum (ductwork). Maybe a return pipe (outside air connection possible) in the bottom hole that is closed up....possibly a fan induced from basement air.

The hot air had to go some where. Does the brick plenum go upstairs. Looks to be a lot of EDR there.

hot_rod

slope in the pipe also, that must be built into the return bends.

JUGHNE

This made me think of visiting the Living History Farm/Town near Des Moines IA.
There was a large house about 100 years old fully restored.
It had what looked to be fireplaces back to back on a central wall for both floors. It actually was fake fireplace with all the trimmings of mantle etc. There was a warm air grill in each.
The heat source was in the basement which was of course off limits to visitors.
I was assuming hot air furnace, but after seeing this picture it could have been a steamer, it would be more logical perhaps.
The original owner was a coal baron in the area.
I guess he knew how dirty coal burning could be.

I have seen pictures of these coils used for wall radiators and was always baffled on how to screw them together.
MBG is that the return bends were not a true 180 bend and one female socket had left hand threads??

DanHolohan

Indirect heating.

Big Ed_4

The brick was used as ductwork ?

ChrisJ

Seems a bit extreme to use brick as a duct, no?

My 1860s house has some left over short ducts from floor grates, I guess they had a wood\coal stove in the basement when there were wood\coal stoves in the bedrooms on the 2nd floor.

DanHolohan

Yes, I’ve seen it.

Zman

Of course it is indirect heating. The bottom of the stack in vented to the outside. The registers come out of the stack at each floor. When the radiator heats up it pulls in outside air, tempers it and supplies it to the spaces in a quiet even flow. There is no fan or fancy controls, just natural convection. There are many of these turn of the century setups still running today. The Biltmore mansion outside of Asheville NC has dozens of these still fully operational.

DanHolohan

And The Breakers in Newport also has them.

ChrisJ

So...…...they bring in 100% outside air to heat the house? That must be so humid in the winter...………..

DanHolohan

Yes

ChrisJ

Humidity...………..

JUGHNE

The brick "ductwork" would add tremendous mass for heat storage. Assuming the brickwork went up thru the center portion of the house, this would give you some coasting time between firing the boiler.

There was some design of wood burning stoves that required only one fire built per day because of the thermal mass.
(depends on outdoor temp of course).

But the questions remains: how is this screwed together??

Steamhead

DanHolohan said:

And The Breakers in Newport also has them.

And Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Baltimore.

josephmarkowski

I have seen one of these on a much, much larger scale used to heat large fabric mills in Fall River, Ma.
Fan system was power was by a Steam Engine using the Fan hub as the Fly wheel

Royboy

looks like the less than 180° angle in the return bend and length of pipe provides just enough separation to screw the next return bend on. elegant! ( and sure would hate to find a leaking joint post assembly)

BradHotNCold

As JHUGHNE points out, the massive brick work would retain heat. We had a 1685 built center chimney colonial in CT with a fireplace almost big enough to roast a steer. Similarly, we now have a Russian masonry heater in a Maine house that warms the central rooms from an exposed brick chimney.

boilermate

Indoor humidity will be very low with such a system. Winter outside dew points are low, resulting in very low relative humidity when raised to room temperature. For instance:
Air at Dewpoint = 20 degrees raised to 68 degrees = 16% R.H.
Air at Dewpoint = 10 degrees raised to 68 degrees = 10% R.H.