Bad homeowner steam advise= $$$$$

novajke

Please allow me to share a tale of woe. A sad set of circumstance that in part due to changes to the heating system by people not familiar with steam resulted in unneeded high heating costs and ultimately, the impending demolition.

I just finished removing a Weil-McLain 680 that was installed in a beautiful neoclassical mansion that is being torn down to make way for an apartment complex, despite being in the same family for generations. Cost to run the boiler was around $20,000 for maybe 3000-3500 sq ft of heated area. This, combined with a high property tax bill, is why the difficult decision to sell their ancestral property wad made. The home owner installed the boiler himself in 2010, but did so supposedly under the advise of a steam expert. The boiler replaced one of similar size.

So either way, i finish loading up the disassembled boiler and I'm about to head out and notice a 2' section of copper baseboard convector with 1" radiator valves on either side and ask if it was representative of the radiators in the building. It was! Every radiator was similar to that aka: 4' of 1/2 finned copper.

The boiler itself is ridiculously clean considering the hard well water- the home owner would drain and refill the system daily.

So the you have it. A steam boiler sized by the "its the same size as the last one" to heat entirely unsuitable radiators that replaced the orginals. Home owner changed his own boiler and installed a system designed by a remote expert who must not have seen the test of the system. It clearly would have been sized without measuring EDR.

Now the house is being demolished and nobody realizes a series of choices changed the heating system in to an oil guzzler when, in reality, it could be far better. Maybe if somebody got there sooner things could have been different.

Jamie Hall

just… sad

EBEBRATT-Ed

This happens often. People think put in the same size boiler it will be ok.

Copper baseboard is questionable on steam. It can work but isn't the best option and certainly if not sized right .

ethicalpaul

Am I to understand that the alleged wastefulness of this boiler is what caused the sale and demolition of this home? I admit I'm a rather skeptical person so maybe it's just me but…really?

Jamie Hall

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869536#Comment_1869536

Unfortunately, @ethicalpaul , I can see that — in combination with the taxes which were also mentioned. In fact, regrettably, this is an all too common scenario. This is particularly true where the house is a multi-generational thing. Now there are likely to have been other factors as well — it is very likely that the owners made a LOT more money then they might have without the teardown option (indeed, the property may not have been saleable at any price without that option, despite what the tax man thinks).

But it encapsulates the fundamental problem with historical preservation: it doesn't pay.

novajke

It obviously wasn't just the high heating cost, but it certainly was a contributing factor to the sale of the property overall. This was an old estate with many acres of land and multiple buildings including 2 other houses. The area surrounding has since developed and this is a case of the land being too valuable to sell to a new owner who wished to preserve the property as it sat. They attempted many uses for the house, such as wedding venues, a bed and breakfast and even air bnb but nothing was able to cover operating costs.

There was over 2 years of city council meetings and the town historic society fighting to save the house, but ultimately the march of progress doesn't relent.

I suspect a few iterations of 'the old boiler only lasted 10 years, and the house is cold, let's get something bigger' were responsible for the 19 hp stream plant installed in a relatively small mansion.

I don't know if the boiler would have been oversized for the orginal radiators the house would have had (I suspect so), but certainly the replacement radiation was not well matched.

mattmia2

i mean like 2 years of that 20k would have paid someone to put in appropriately sized emitters and fix up the boiler to bring the heating cost down to the coupe k that it should be.

novajke

It would have been the best course of action to get any more effective form of hearing for that old place, but unfortunately a little knowledge is dangerous and the old man was sentimental to the boiler he installed with his own two hands. The issue was that it didn't occur to the home owners that the radiators are wrong since they have been that way as long as they remember them being that way. The copper aluminum fin deals were likely installed in the 60s or 70s (the 50 year old son said they were always there)

The old man literally drained and refilled the boiler daily to prevent it from clogging up with limescale like the previous boiler. The water comes from a 400 foot well so i don't think oxygen is too big of a concern. I can't say how the rest of the system worked as it was all ripped out by the time I came by, it must have had some sort of venting somewhere. At some point, after the decision was made to sell, the ungodly fuel bills were part of the justification as to why the property can't be kept in its present form.

ethicalpaul

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869577#Comment_1869577

This is my point— 20k was the reported total heating cost, not the cost of any "inefficiency" from the no-doubt oversized boiler. If we think the heating cost should have been 2k instead of 20k, then where did all that extra heat go?

mattmia2

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869605#Comment_1869605

up the vent. that poor boiler was firing 24/7 on the pressuretrol because it couldn't move much of the heat out in to that fin tube.

Steamhead

Proving once again that you can't fix stupid.

ethicalpaul

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869608#Comment_1869608

The pressuretrol got a workout, sure, but it stops the burners

There is no way 90% of all the produced heat went up the flue

Anyway we can all be sad about the house going down but I don’t see the boiler being responsible. Sorry for the disruption

novajke

In not an expert and can only go by the figures quoted to me in the consumption I'm sure the uninsulated 3" supply pipes going the perimeter of the basement were able remove a good amount of heat. As far as the vents on the system, i can only speculate they were inadequate/ non functioning or even intentionally leaking steam to make the system work. I make this assumption by the fact that previous boilers failed prematurely from excess mineral buildup clogging them up. Excessive stream loss and constant hard water refilling the system would result in this condition. For all i know they had an an orangery and needed heat and humidity. (Obviously not, but at the fuel consumption levels, a lot of heat/ steam had to be going somewhere aside from the living quarters)

novajke

I'm not blaming the boiler or near boiler piping, this installation could have been photographed for a textbook from Weil McLain's steam course. Tall header, swing joints, reducing elbow that tied into the return and Hartford loop all were perfect. And yes, if the rest of the system was performing as designed, the large boiler wouldnt have been so bad on consumption. Ultimately, it is the poor advise and modifications done to the rest of the system over decades that wasted heat. An expert commissioned the boiler after the home owner installed it, and aside from the uninsulated supply pipes, this expert wouldn't have seen anything that was out of place in the basement. I can only speculate how so much oil could have been burned, but the pile of scrap copper convectors give a piece of the puzzle. I can't say if a cheaper heating bill would have saved this house but it certainly is too late to speculate now.

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869631#Comment_1869631

But where was the "wasted heat" going?

leonz

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869569#Comment_1869569

I wish I could have seen the coal stoker boiler that heated this house.

novajke

Your guess world be better than mine. Perhaps the fuel cost quoted to me was exaggerated or included the other buildings as well. For all i know, they had little hoses attached to bleeder valves that they directed out the window or through an exterior wall. I only have the info i could covertly gather. Heck, it could actually have been designed as a gravity system and someone saw big pipes and assumed it was steam and didn't disconnect the expansion tank in the attic.

Performing an autopsy on this heading system by asking more specific questions may make them second guess the choices they made and even feel guilty about selling it to a company which is tearing it down.

GGross

I'm thinking it was a greatly exaggerated number, when you lose the family home the exact financial circumstances that lead to it can be quite embarrassing, but we can all feel empathy toward high heating bills and taxes. I heat an area a little over 2/3 that, 60+ year old house with an 85k mod/con for less than $3k per year in climate zone 6,including hot water and gas for cooking

EBEBRATT-Ed

@ethicalpaul If you run a steam boiler with poor venting the house cant heat. The basement will be very warm (yes heat goes up through the floor) but the boiler will constantly cycle on pressure, and the fuel bill will be extreme.

It's like a car. Drive the bumper up against a big tree and keep the gas pedal down. You burn a lot of fuel but don't go anywhere.

All the old steam jobs I looked at if the boiler room was excessively hot look at the venting

Jamie Hall

In my climate zone, a VERY rough estimate for an average house with a well designed, installed, and maintained heating system, either heat pump, oil, or natural gas, would be around a dollar per square foot of usable living space. That's a ballpark — it could easily be half that, or half again, without raising any real red flags.

Usually a more significant factor — particularly for a larger place with multiple buildings which, while old and well-loved, is not historically significant — is the combination of property tax, which in many northeastern states (New England and down to DC) can often run in the mid five figure range, and the attractiveness of selling up and moving to a lower cost of living location.

Often it boils down to do you impoverish yourself and your heirs to keep your family home, or do you sell up and live somewhere else for a quarter or less of the cost… can be a real tough call.

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869682#Comment_1869682

You burn a lot of fuel and go no where because you have a fan cooled radiator to dissipate the heat.

That same radiator and or a transmission cooler also try to get rid of some of the heat from the torque converter if applicable. If you do it long enough you'll overheat things. It won't just burn fuel and make the heat vanish.

A steam boiler with no vents or bad venting, no radiators etc cannot get rid of it's heat so the burner just shuts down. The heat isn't going to just disappear. IMO it'll result in a cold house, but not astronomical fuel bills, it goes against the First Law of Thermodynamics.

$20,000 in a season, you're not talking about energy steam mains can dissipate.

mattmia2

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1869686#Comment_1869686

it goes up the vent. if it isn't going out in to the system, it is mostly standby loss from the air being pulled through the boiler and up the vent. what was 20% on a normal system becomes 80% or 90%

The burner runs and pulls heat up the flue with it, it runs a higher stack temp because the system isn't taking heat out of the hx, eventually (or rather quickly) the boiler builds pressure and the presusretrol turns the burner off. That heat that can't get in to the system then is taken up the vent with heated air from the house(or in to the boiler room and out the vent for other appliances and around the sill) until the temp/pressure drops enough for the pressuretrol to kick back in and it repeats the cycle.

ethicalpaul

well in 2017 my house had a plug in the main vent hole yet heated pretty well. Not optimally but surely not at 10% efficiency.

then I found this forum and look what happened!

novajke

If I had to guess, the house was over radiated with the orginal cast iron and to combat this the baseboards were installed. As far as i know the house was sufficiently warm, just with a huge fuel bill. Both inlet and outlet connections were 1" on the assembly. The pipe then split off into the two copper pipes in the convector. These weren't slant fin baseboards but rather 2 copper/aluminum finned pipes with a stamped sheetmetal cover that resembled cast iron baseboard heaters. There wasn't any vent so i don't know where the air would escape to if not further down the line.

mattmia2

convectors will work fine on steam if they are properly installed. Convectors are in no way shape or form baseboard.