Expanding an existing steam system, take 2

Jason Ruiter

Greetings again,

This is definitely not my area, so please bear with me...

As I mentioned before, I'm putting a 450 sw ft addition on my home. (Basically a second floor). I currently have one pipe steam heat with a boiler that was installed in 1981. I like radiant heat and have no problems keeping what I have.

I understand it would be tricky to "tap" the existing steam pipe for 2 or 3 runs upstairs. I've heard of something called a hot water condenste (or something similar) that will let me use my steam boiler to run a hot water system.

I'd like to plan for the future here -- I intend on keeping radiant heat when the current boiler dies, probably hot water, so I'd prefer not to do the heating in the addition twice.

With that background:
1) What can I hook up to my steam boiler to run a hot water system? How large a space can I expect to heat? (I know this is boiler-size dependent. I'll post the numbers from the plate on the boiler when I get home. The ones I remember are 80000 btu output and 250 sq feet of steam)

2) Is this approach more cost effective than throwing out the whole system and starting over? I'm on a tight budget here, and hadn't plan to redo the rest of the house heating for a few years.

Any help/advice appreiciated. I'm trying to get a handle on what can be done and how much of it I might be able to do myself.


Thanks!
Jason

Unknown

read this first.....

http://www.heatinghelp.com/newsletter.cfm?Id=29