Heating a room to 110 degrees - reminded me of a question

Unknown

How hot can a house get ? Say somehow a zone acidentally kept running and running - is there a point at which you couldnt heat the room anymore ? If the boiler temp is 180 , could a room actually go that high ? Sounds crazy though .

Floyd

Walked in a haouse once...

that had the candles all melted all over!!!!
Don't know how hot it was, but had to be pretty warm!!
If I remember right that was a scorched air system!!!!

Floyd

Gary Fereday

Hummmmmm

The Delta T comes into play. The higher the room temp, the greater the heat loss. I once heated with Oil fluid a auto-clav 35 feet long x7 feet dia. to 600*Fwith 150 psi inside. it worked except the engineers forgot how long it would take to heat the product to their likeing. They tried to insulate it better but to no avail. I tried to tell them what was happening but they were so educated that a lowley plumber did not know anything. Any way the higher the inside temp the more heat you have to dump in ! bigugh

DanHolohan

Not just possible

It was once required. One of my old books shows the temperature chart that the contractor had to use at various times of the year. For instance, let's say the contractor installed a steam system in July when the outside temperature was 90 degrees. To prove the system would work during the winter (and in order to get paid), the contractor would have to raise the indoor temperature to something like 125 degrees.

Talk about sweating for your money!

John Morrill

looking for 90+ degrees

Yeah, good old delta-T is a real witch.
There's a new kind of yoga that is supposed to be performed in hot, humid conditions (90-105 degree ambient is preferred). In the jurisdiction where I work (as, ahem, energy manager) we have a new community sports facility, where this trendy yoga is taught twice a week in a multi-purpose room used for ballet, aerobics, etc. at other hours. So... since this facility was built just 3 years ago without this particular use in mind, we've added some electric heat and tweaked the gas system for a few hours of wicked heat... just in this room. In the fall & winter. Meeting this kind of requirement is what gives "customer service" a bad name. Of course the customers do this yoga wearing next to nothing. Isn't yoga supposed to be about simplicity and asceticism? [sorry, just a rant]

Mark Eatherton1

Man...

I'll bet that sucked up some BTU's. You'd have to heat the mass AND the air. Imagine walking into that room unsuspectedly. WHAM!! Hit you in the face like a hammer.

We used to have an old rule of thum saying about the energy conservation potentials in commercial mechancial rooms.

"The number of feet you are blown backwards by the heat blast as you walk into a meniacal mechanical room is equal to the number of thousands of dollars you can save yearly. 3 feet equals $3,000.00, 5 feet equals $5,000 dollars and so on.

One time, I walked unsuspectedly into a mechanical room and got knocked out by CO. Fortunately for me, there was a sharp hotel employee watching me and he pulled me to clean air. I coulda died. I don't remember how many dollars we saved that hotel, but I'm sure they were elated. And I'm still alive! (Or at least I THINK so....)

I guess BTU's were real cheap back then... Still are to my liking.

It's like I tell the Denver Water Board. "Ya wanta create conservation?, triple the cost of water, and conservation WILL happen. You can preach to the choir all you want, but until you grab them by the wallet, they're going to ignore you."

Guess what. They're not allowed to make a profit. It's in their charter that they must sell the treated water to the citizens for as cheap as they possibly can... And they do! Denver still has some of the lowest rates per thousand gallons. Anyway, I have no idear what this has to do with raising a room to a jillion degrees F.

If it were me, I make sure that the room was super insulated so you don't compound an existing cooling problem. Then I'd throw in a high velocity air system and watch them bake. I've tried it with baseboard, and normally sized, you can't hit it.

You need to move some air in order to get it done. You CAN however influence the amount of air moved by augmenting with radiant. In fact, the technology exists to literally "nuke" the rooms occupants using the proven Hot Rod Rohr methodology of "Radiant Everything!!"

I am a firm believer in this technolgy.

Nuke 'em with tenderness...right HR!!

ME

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Mark Eatherton1

I saw...

110 degrees once. The HO was away on a month vacation, and his ex wife was watching the house. She called us in. We found 2 dead birds (Makahs) and a themnostat wire that had the ploarity reversed on the furnace, so when the duct work shorted the stat wire to ground, the burner and blower fired and took it to 110 Deg F. This occured during the summer.

Poor birds.

ME

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

I once tried to heat my gravity conversion to 180°

About 60° outside and was following Air-Trol instructions to the letter. After about 12 hours of continuous fire, the supply temp was about 170° and room temp was a bit over 100° and climbing!