What is a good alternative for replacing a one-pipe steam heating system??

SteamingatMohawk

@ethicalpaul Fossil fuels are good only as long as they are available at an affordable cost.

At some point in time, probably less than infinity away if we're not already there, the rate of generation of fossil fuel may not be sufficient to meet the rate of consumption and the supply will run out.

Likewise, the fact the US is a net exporter of energy, means we are consuming more of our own natural resources, only to be subject to importing them years, decades or centuries from now.

Therefore, I submit it is reasonable to work on alternate methods and let market forces determine the mix of energy sources used.

As another aside, hydrogen as an energy source is kinda cool, because it's byproduct is water, not CO and CO2. I think one way to harvest the hydrogen from water is electrolysis, but I don't know how cost effective that cycle might be.

If mankind can put people on the moon, these challenges can be explored as well and perhaps something worthwhile can come of it.

SteamingatMohawk

@Jamie Hall Years ago I remember coming across articles on really low temperature heat pump systems. I think they were being investigated in Vermont. I haven't kept up with the technology and don't see anything obvious in the media about it. Do you have any idea how that effort might intersect with the patent you referred to above?

ChrisJ

A good alternative for replacing a one pipe steam system is a two pipe steam system.

WMno57

ChrisF said:

I am wondering what other, simpler options there are for heating, and replacing what I currently have?

You asked for for three things; Simple, Heat, and Replace.

Electric resistance heat will give you Simple and Heat.

I'm a big fan of redundancy. I think your existing steam system should be the major part of your Heat solution. I would not rip it out. Your current steam system will last longer, and be more reliable than anything you can buy today at any price. But nothing is 100 percent uptime.

To backup your steam, I think electric resistance would be a good fit. This could be as simple as a couple of electric baseboards, a resistance heater in your current AC air handler, or space heaters and fans.

You can make it through this winter. There is a tech out there who can fix up your current steam system. Finding that person will be easier than replacing your steam system.

MaxMercy

SteamingatMohawk said:

Likewise, the fact the US is a net exporter of energy, means we are consuming more of our own natural resources, only to be subject to importing them years, decades or centuries from now.

It will be hundreds of years at projected usage before we run out of fossil fuels, and who knows what undiscovered reserves are still unknown.

While the U.S. is an exporter now, it may not be in a few years for reasons not having to do with U.S. reserves of oil and gas..

MaxMercy

ethicalpaul said:

No one is going to take away our gas, folks, don't sweat it.

I just read that in the U.K., no new homes built past 2025 will be allowed to have gas boilers. Can the U.S. be far behind? I guess we can watch California and see what they do first..

If something like that happens to gas and heating oil, production will slow as demand does. Costs will go up which will force more people to switch to something other than gas an oil, which will reduce demand further.

ChrisJ

MaxMercy said:

No one is going to take away our gas, folks, don't sweat it.

I just read that in the U.K., no new homes built past 2025 will be allowed to have gas boilers. Can the U.S. be far behind? I guess we can watch California and see what they do first.. If something like that happens to gas and heating oil, production will slow as demand does. Costs will go up which will force more people to switch to something other than gas an oil, which will reduce demand further.

The UK may change that rule.
The US may never adopt such rules even if it's not changed.

We have no way of predicting such things.

You use what's available to you right now for the best bang for your buck and or comfort.  You don't install a heating system for what may or may not be 10-50 years from now.

WMno57

I might be biased, but discussion of the future availability of natural gas might fit better here:

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/182249/environmental-defense-fund-not-in-favor-of-upgrading-chicago-gas-infrastructure#latest

This thread belongs to @ChrisF. He has to make some decisions about his home's future heat direction. In the spirit of Heating Help, discussion of the future of energy probably doesn't help him with those decisions.

Wishing everyone a Merry and Warm Christmas!

clammy

Just to comment on Jamie’s points . What I was really pointing to is that a 2 or possibly 3 stage electric boiler is small average homes not older homes which would require a huge retrofit system to be installed at which point most would not want to pay for unless it was air based . If gas and oil where no longer available older homes would need drastic renovation and would have to be brought up to the lastest insulation codes or just pay through the nose for your fossil fuels and possible fuel over use charges for older un improved homes and of course mega mansion . Unless wet heads get a head start on figuring out how to deal with it ,will be sitting on the side lines as you watch air based system be installed . In total Reality there is no possible way that an airbase system could be cheaper to operate than a water-based plus you’ll be stuck with running 100% electric system and paying the electric company whatever rate increasing they demand . There has to be a point where all heating contractor are embracing low temp system over 180 systems consisting of baseboard ,zone valve and the same old same old ,panel rads trv outdoor rest and mid system temps at outdoor design temps this is what should be happening not baseboard 180 but this is me and I know it will happen sooner or later and the change will happen after most realize that all they have in there pockets is change from paying the fuel costs . Peace and good luck clammy

Jamie Hall

Quite agree with @clammy ad @ChrisJ .

What concerns me is that most of the discussion is political, not engineering or science based, and rests on four assumptions:
First, heating systems and other fossil fuel applications have a 20 to 30 year maximum life.
Second, the existing built environment has at most a 40 to 50 years life.
Third, all fossil fuel applications are completely replaceable with "renewable" (neither fossil nor nuclear powered) electricity
Fourth, the odd exceptions to the first three belong to people or firms who have unlimited funds to replace/renovate/ whatever.

Unfortunately, none of the four assumptions is true in most of the US, never mind the rest o the world (though all four are largely true in California...), and thus we are seeing political decisions made which are based on faulty assumptions -- and which will have a major impact on tens if not hundreds of millions of people.

ethicalpaul

MaxMercy said:

No one is going to take away our gas, folks, don't sweat it.

I just read that in the U.K., no new homes built past 2025 will be allowed to have gas boilers. Can the U.S. be far behind? I guess we can watch California and see what they do first.. If something like that happens to gas and heating oil, production will slow as demand does. Costs will go up which will force more people to switch to something other than gas an oil, which will reduce demand further.

I said they aren’t taking away our gas. A moratorium on gas in new construction in San Francisco is not “taking away our gas”. Folks on this forum react strongly to a few cities passing rules regarding new construction as if the green stormtroopers are coming.

I’d be very happy if fossil fuel were heavily taxed in order to spur development of alternatives. But instead, fossil fuels continue to be subsidized and promoted even during times of higher supply and lower cost (such as that brought about by fracking).

I have seen that nothing is going to change in my lifetime so I have stopped caring what happens, although I still like to try the new things like my heat pump water heater. And over-the-top rants about government interference tend to annoy me but oh well whatever it’s fine.

WMno57

ethicalpaul said:

I’d be very happy if fossil fuel were heavily taxed

I could make the case that would be a regressive tax and not ethical.

But I won't. Not in someone else's thread, and on Christmas.

I hope everyone has a very merry and WARM Christmas! And many more to follow.

P.S. A Democrat, a Republican, an Environmentalist, and a Libertarian walk into a Bar. The Heat is broken. We will have to wait 15 years for the punchline.

Jells

@ChrisF, I feel for you. It's been 8 years and I'm still figuring out how to wrangle my steam. I wish there were a simple flowchart diagram for diagnosing these things. People here are very helpful, but it's still annoying. I've found using $30 logging thermometers very helpful in gathering hard data on what's going on in the various parts of the system. You can graph it in Excel to compare them.

ethicalpaul said:

No one is going to take away our gas, folks, don't sweat it.

In 2012 when I had a new boiler put in and the tech recommended using a oil type with a gas burner, I had him stash the oil burner from the previous boiler, as the oil tank was brand new too. It wasn't clear that oil would never be cheaper than gas again and I thought being able to switch easily was a great idea.

But now I wonder about renewable gas or oil. It's certainly technically possible. You could probably burn corn or rapeseed oil with minimal tweaks. There's also a lot of chemistry tweaks to turn renewable electricity into liquid or gas fuel, even aviation fuel. It's not economical in the current fracking economy, but it's easy to see scenarios where it starts to make sense.

Even if fossil stays where it is and solar and wind keep dropping as they have been the inefficiencies of conversion still may be cost effective. There's also a ton of cellulosic alcohol tech that would become economic if oil goes over $100/barrel.

Jamie Hall

"I could make the case that would be a regressive tax and not ethical."

Indeed so... read my assumptions again. There is no way that any of the places we care for could afford to change their heating systems to accommodate the new.. The money simply isn't there. Nor is it there to meet the cost of highly taxed fuel.

This isn't fiction. It isn't climate denying. It isn't crying wolf. The money isn't there, and that's all there is about it. Nor for us, not for thousands of landlords. Your choices are walk away, or go back to how folks managed 150 years ago.

Jells

Jamie Hall said:

The money simply isn't there. Nor is it there to meet the cost of highly taxed fuel. 

I own and manage rental housing. There's an argument to be made that it's a zero sum game, that if energy costs went up significantly, the absurdly high price of housing would need to come down to compensate.

We've seen this operate with property taxes as properties that hadn't had been revalued in decades and were paying a fraction of their market taxes were corrected and had to drop their prices because buyers looks at their monthly nut more than absolute values. Higher taxes or energy costs reduces their purchasing power, and across an entire market that forces down prices.

We are in a very interesting time in energy. it's currently cheaper over a decade to build a wind turbine than to burn gas in an existing plant. https://www.lazard.com/media/450773/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf  So a carbon tax would not be pushing uphill but actually helping to speed downhill.

WMno57

Jells said:

There's also a ton of cellulosic alcohol tech that would become economic if oil goes over $100/barrel.

A good friend of mine was working on that at an R&D startup. He was one of the smartest persons I have ever known.

One of the processes to make cellulosic ethonol is to gasify the waste cellulose into Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. Then frankenbugs eat the H and CO and pee ethanol. Maybe someday @Jamie Hall can run Cedric on distilled frankenbug pee.

For fun my friend had an old internal combustion engine that ran on Town Gas. Town Gas is part Carbon Monoxide. He had a special blend made up for him at an industrial gas supplier to duplicate the Town Gas that was sold 130 years ago.

My friend did everything the nanny state and some nanny techs would consider dangerous and try to protect us from today:
Hookers in South America
Drag racing
Road racing
Flew small airplanes
DIY everything when he was younger before he chose to hire it out.

None of the above ever caught up with him. But cancer did.

RIP buddy.

Jells

WMno57 said:

A good friend of mine was working on that at an R&D startup. He was one of the smartest persons I have ever known.

One of the processes to make cellulosic ethonol is to gasify the waste cellulose into Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. Then frankenbugs eat the H and CO and pee ethanol. Maybe someday @Jamie Hall can run Cedric on distilled frankenbug pee.

Your buddy sounds like he was quite the guy. There was a ton of startups working on this before fracking pulled the rug out from under them, they just couldn't compete at the new energy price point. But it's still out there.

FWIW there's a lot of compelling evidence the whole fracking boom is another banking bubble, that a fracked well never 'really' makes money even as everyone down the line does, then the small company that drilled it goes belly up.

SteamHeat

Respectfully,

You can take my steam heating system when you pry it from my cold hands. LOL !!!

Seriously, I have lived with steam heat and hydronic. I would never willingly give up steam heat. I have zero interest in hot air / heat pumps. There is nothing like the bone warming hot air convections off of a blazing 215 degree steam heat radiator fully pressurized with steam. Just nothing like it.

If ever the day came that natural gas was no longer supplied, even though there is enough frozen in polar ice to last for centuries even with our wasteful usage, like if greenhouse emissions were just un-correctable with other means, and roof top solar was the only option available, I would look for electric driven elements to replace my gas burner tubes on my steam boiler.

My gas bills in the winter are way lower than neighbors who have hydronic heat because I use a Vaporstat, large main vents and a stat with adjustable differential. Steam just needs a bit of tweaking to get the most out of it.

This is just my opinion and I respect your right to disagree.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Kjmass1

PMJ said:

My entire season gas bill in Cleveland Ohio is $1000 and next to zero maintenance. 1000 edr system and house with no insulation kept at 70F. You couldn't pay me to part with this. I'll be here unless they outlaw natural gas and shut me off.

Just curious on those numbers. Cleveland and Boston have about the same heating degree days. My 2000sf fully insulated 1940s home is pretty close to $2,000/year for domestic hot water and steam heat at $1.50/therm. We also keep it 70F 24/7. How much do you pay for gas?

ChrisJ

PMJ said:

I have a co-worker that lives in NJ who ripped out his oil/water radiators and replaced everything with heat pumps. He is paying $900-1200/month in electricity during the winter months; 3-5kwh/month. This system was installed this year and is already broken.

Off the charts nuts. The maintenance $$ of all those moving parts will be intolerable. My entire season gas bill in Cleveland Ohio is $1000 and next to zero maintenance. 1000 edr system and house with no insulation kept at 70F. You couldn't pay me to part with this. I'll be here unless they outlaw natural gas and shut me off.

How many sqft is your uninsulated building?

PMJ

Currently I pay $5.50/MCF for gas. The house is 3500 sqft. At an average temp of 30F I will use  about 40 MCF.

PMJ

That was 40 MCF in a month. My $1k per season approximation was for winter months gas only and did not include summertime hot water and standing pilot which I never turn off. Summertime gas bill is about $25 so add $175 or so for annual total.