Replace Boiler/Radiator Heat with Forced Air?

Fran Salyers

Help! The 50-year-old boiler in our 115-year-old building is leaking and inefficient. We planned to replace it with a new boiler. Our long-time and trusted HVAC guy points out that the visible pipes close to the boiler are in bad shape (rust/corrosion) and that there's no way to tell the condition of the pipes in the walls of this huge, brick, 3-story building. He can replace the boiler and the visible sections of pipe but warns that the hidden pipes could be in equally bad shape -- or worse (since they're the same age as the house). He says the pipes might not stand up under the higher pressure of the new boiler. Is there ANY way to replace the old pipes without major construction, or are we better off to take his advice and replace the boiler with a forced-air heating/cooling system? Thanks for any guidance on this!

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

Steam or Hot Water?

Whoever you talk to, make sure you get at least one person who is familiar with hydronic heating to look at what you have. Even though the pipes may look bad from the outside, they may be fine inside.

I'm not saying that your contractor doesn't know his stuff, I've just heard of too many HVAC contractors who don't know what they are looking at who want to tear out a perfectly good system to install one of their own.

Is your HVAC contractor familiar with hydronic heating?

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jim sokolovic

Why would the new boiler...

require higher water pressure in the system?

t. tekushan

pipe condition

If the piping is not leaking, I'm not sure there is a big problem. Of course, I'm not there so I won't immediately diss your HVAC homey. If the visible piping has been exposed to moisture (boiler rooms can be pretty murky in the summer) its probably not too much to worry about. I've seen plenty of piping that looks awful on the surface but still has good integrity.

However, pipes that run along the floor are another story. It seems to me, however, that they are worth replacing. Converting to forced air is not going to be cheap.
Also, your wintertime comfort will be severly compromized. With a new boiler the existing heating system will be more economical than forced air.

Every forced air retrofit I've seen leaves a lot of cold spots in an old building, so factor in the cost of operating electric baseboards in many of the spaces in the building. believe me, one winter without the steam heat and the electric heaters will pop up the next fall like fall flowers.

If you want air conditioning, install that separately so that each system operates in an optimum fashion.

BTW, there is no more efficient heat transfer medium than steam, in my opinion. Water is a close second. I hope I haven't offended anyone with that statement. All I really mean is that if you have a steam system, KEEP IT and tune it.