Why did they replace hot air with steam?

Hal

I own and live in an 1899 row house in Brooklyn, NY that originally had forced air heating. I know because vestiges of the ductwork is visible in the basement, I have found ductwork and registers in the walls, and a couple of my neighbors still have working hot air systems.

With all the ducting in place, I wonder why anyone would go to the trouble of retrofitting to steam. Exposed pipes, radiators, all that work, and expense. I have no idea when the conversion was done, but I suspect it was early to mid century.

Thad English

probably always steam

The place has probably always been steam heated. I recall reading in the Lost Art that some homes had the radiators installed in the walls or under floors and had ducting to move the heat into the rooms from the rads. Some people didn't like the looks of the radiators in the rooms. The ducting that you see are probably the leftover from one of those systems.

I have a register in the wall next to my front door and it connects to the basement-ceiling-mounted steam radiator via tin ductwork. In front of that register is the best place to stand after coming in from the cold: THe heat just rollls out of there.....

DaveC

?

Are you in the Downtown Brooklyn area? I've been servicing that area for several years and have seen some of those old forced air systems you speak of.
They were difficult to control and balance. They dried out the air throughout the home and blew dust all over the place.
A steam system was considered an upgrade to heating those large beautiful homes, much the way that a forced-circulation hot water system might be considered an upgrade today.

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Hal

John, I'm in Crown Heights.

I can see how my wife would have nightmares about dust everywhere and all that dry air. I'm happy with steam, and with our third winter in the house this season, we continue tweak and balance the system after what was obviously years of neglect. New and properly sized vents, repitching some pipes that settled with the house, and getting the boiler serviced yearly. The next project will be to have the copper near-boiler pipes replaced with proper pipes.

Thad English

I stand corrected.

Steamhead

Hal, I see these conversions frequently

Your house had a scorched-air system that worked (or at least it was supposed to work) by gravity. No blower. Many large, older cities are full of houses like this, where the scorched-air did not work well so they installed steam or hot-water.

I say doing away with scorched-air and installing steam or hot-water is a major comfort upgrade, even today.

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David Efflandt

My grandparent's had a gravity furnace that was originally coal (before my time), converted to gas. Since it worked by convection, it was very quiet. But the ducts were so huge that they took up a significant amount of space in the basement. Second floor was unheated other than whatever filtered up from first floor ceiling.