Conversion of steam to hot water.......hb

heatboy

I was at an Energy Kinetics class this week and the topic of converting a steam system to hot water came up. Suprisingly, almost half of the class said they have done this. I may be missing something, but I see no logic in doing this unless the whole system is trashed and then start over. When I look at the costs incurred, it breaks down to this. First, see if the heat loss will support the loss of btu output of the radiant. Second, removing and checking each radiator to see if it will hold water pressure and cleaning them if they do. All this would seem to be a very expensive "find out first" step with all of the time involved before any actual work can be done. Since there is nothing wrong with a well working steamer, what's the point?

hb

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David Sutton_3

i had a custermer who..

+wanted the steam system ripped out, well we could not talk him out of it, but did let him know the cost of checking out all the old rads, he went with new baseboard instead, all he really need was a new steam boiler and some new main vents and he would have had a great system, oh well cant win them all....David

kevin coppinger_4

same thing happened...

to me. He wanted it to be ripped out and put in baseboard. I told him it just needed to be insulated and cleaned...I know that I didn't get the job..went to a low bidder...kpc

Steamhead

I really don't see the point

of this type of conversion. The chance of leaks is too great, and you usually need to run such high temperatures that "condensing" boilers won't run in their condensing range. Then there's the issue of replacing return lines that are too small or non-existant..... I could go on and on.

I have found that it's much easier and cost-effective to repair a steam system than to try to convert it.

Does Energy Kinetics make steam boilers? If not, that's probably part of the reason they like these conversions.

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