Antique home - Northern New England - new heating system??

Christian Egli

I find it easy, knowing of steam heat systems that have been there for ever and still to this day show all the signs of youth and vitality, to believe that radiators date back to antediluvian times. Sorry, going back 220 years ago is a little stretch indeed.

Jerry bets dollars to doughnuts, it sounds like a cool wager, but boy am I glad I did not bet with you David, loosing a doughnut would pain me.

Back to the antique home, if radiators are not contemporary enough to the inside finishing, then neither should air registers. A plan for under-floor or alternately ceiling coil heating could yield the happiest results.

Radiant heat does not leak out of the home like a hot air draft does, so even though radiators are not 220 years ago period, they’re still my preferred choice.

Now, don’t we have some unfinished doughnuts to go back to?

MTCS

Antique home - cold climate - new heating system suggestions??

We have a 220 year old home in northern CT and are looking at a new heating system. Our current system is with a 20 yr old oil boiler (fine), and large forced hot water radiators in each room. With new windows and new clapboard we've done what we can to cut down on drafts but it is a cold house in the winter. The house is about 2500 sq ft, three floors plus an ell.

I'd like to get rid of the radiators for a number of reasons - bulky, hard to work around, hard to keep clean (dust is a problem for us), hard to humidify in the winter, and also we'd like to consider AC down the road. We also have exposed pipes running along the interior of the house for the upper floor radiators. Going with a ducted system would be much easier to maintain for us. We considered baseboard but have a lot of electrical outlets and irreplaceable antique moldings that would be covered over with the baseboard, plus the dust issue, and I'd still be stuck with the exposed pipes. I'd love to go with at least two zones too to try to conserve oil.

My dad is an old style engineer and is freaked that we are considering replacing rads with hydro air. Is this a crazy idea? Can you really heat an antique home with hydro air? How is it to maintain? Is it more or less efficient in terms of oil use to heat the house?

Any suggestions, advice, comments, other ideas are welcome. Thanks -

Christian Egli

Aren't fathers are always right?

I’ll side with your father. A grand stately old home deserves to be heated by grand stately radiators. Once removed, the missing spot will always look awkward.

Speaking of heating drafty buildings, it is usually always more efficient to do so with a radiant system (like radiators or floor heat) than with a forced air system (whether it is hydro-air or a plain furnace). Just think of how many commercial applications there are where the forced air units have been replaced by radiant and not the other way around. Go look at your car dealer.

As far as dust and humidity is concerned, forced air systems don’t exactly shine. It is so bad, you’ll need a filter and possibly a humidifier with your furnace for you to get at least a little comfort.

You’ve already got the best comfort with your radiators.

Here are some suggestions.

The AC can be easily provided by split unit systems. Inside the rooms you have a small and tasteful evaporator tucked along the wall. There is no need for ducts where the dust and mold accumulates.

You could install staple up under-floor radiant pipes and provide heat with no visible gadgetry. No grilles, no ducts, no baseboard and sadly, no radiators.

Best of luck

Steve Ebels_3

Who's telling you...............

Who's telling you that there will be less dust with F/A heat? If you have dust problems with the rads you'll amplify the problem with F/A. I don't care what kind of filtration system you put on it, that's a fact. Your dust is obviously coming from internal sources such as rugs, carpet, upholstered furniture or maybe pets. Cats are the worst thing you can have for dust. If you want to eliminate dust, get rid of those things first. (Read a book titled "Help my house is killing me". You'll be ripping out your carpet the next day and burning your bed the day after.) After dealing with the internal sources, install a good filter system such as a LifeBreath TFP filter. It's self powered and needs only a couple 6" supply and return runs to clean the air in your whole house.

Now.........as far as unsightly pipes go.......Consider what will need to be done in order to get ductwork up to the second floor of the house. Imagine the task of running a pair of ducts, roughly 8"x18" each up from the basement through your main floor and up to the ceiling. From there you will have to run branch supply and return ducts (6"-8" diameter) to each room on the second level. How are you going to fit that in and what kind of framing/boxing in/drywalling are you going to have to do in order to conceal all of those?

Your humidity problem and the fact that the house is hard to heat are related very likely. Both are the result of excess air infiltration in your home. Despite your improvements to the structure, it would seem that the old girl isn't wrapped to tightly. Hire someone to conduct a blower door test and find out where the leaks are, then seal 'em up. Your heating costs will drop dramatically and the humidity will likely be excessive rather than lacking. A nice tight house will ususally generate enough humidity to be comfortable just from internal sources like cooking, showers, laundry etc. If that's not enough you can always elect to use a stand alone humidifier. There are many types available.

Zoning a system is more easily accomplished with hydronic heat than F/A 9 times out of 10. Have someone inspect your piping system to see if the main floor and the upper level can be split and controlled separately. It should be do-able.

Have you considered building a small chase that can hide the pipes?

Listen to your dad, he knows whereof he speaks!

jerry scharf_3

A tad biased

You may find some of the people here, including me, a bit biased. We like comfortable, efficeinct heat. Talk to someone who has gone through the change you are speaking of, and ask them how their home feels and whether the bills are lower or higher. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that they rue the day that they approved the change.

There's a whole lot of science behind it, but the simple answer is that having a major radiant component to the heat in a room is critical for best comfort. Heat delivery through water is more efficient that through air, both for the heat source and for delivery. Finally, what do you put the mittens on and the boots near to melt/dry?

Steve and Christian are on the money with their suggestions. Improving the envelope is the best money you can spend. Then take some of the money you would have put into the conversion and set up the heat source with modern controls, outdoor reset, pressure byapss and constant circulation. Then put TRVs on your radiators and be prepared for comfort you never imagined and will come to expect. I'll bet you have more winter visitors.

I also agree with Christian that the heat sources and a house of that period go together. There are many cool modern radiators of every imaginable style, but it's hard to imagine any of them looking right.

Dust is a whole different can of worms. (I am assuming there are no specific medical issues involved.) We make lots of dust and bring lots in by living. So it becomes an issue of how to manage it. I've seen more forced air systems that work badly because the filters aren't maintained and fill with junk than I can count. So it can help but you have to be rigorous in your attention. A hepa vacuum cleaner can go a long way to collecting the duct to be disposed of and I'll bet it's better maintained. It's all you need for pollen/hay fever.

Don't you hate it when dad's right?

jerry

Dean_7

heat

I'm just a homeowner but from personal experience my sister removed all of her radiators from her 2000 square foot 110 year old home 2 years ago and installed a forced hot air system so she could have air conditioning. Also to get rid of the "old fashioned radiators. Now she has some very out of place duct chases and constantly complains all winter that the house is drafty and unevenly heated when it wasn't before. This summer she also had her ducts cleaned and they weren't pretty. Lots of dust and crud. Something you may want to consider. Also your father's right.

Wayco Wayne_2

I agree

with the guys above. When you mention lack of humidity in the Winter it jumped out at me because humidity levels are directly linked to amount of infiltration. Modern houses that have little or no infiltration can have the problem of too much humidity. Houses that are too drafty will have too little. Improve your building envelope and learn to love the classic look of the dignified old radiators. That's how I would approach it. WW

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

A 220 year-old home is unlikely to have good places to run duckwork. Remember--you need supply ducts AND return ducts. Inconsiderate contractors will compromise the structure and/or the system design. While you can get by with a few centralized returns for a heat only system, A/C systems really need returns in each logical space. Because warm air is larger than cold, the returns for a combined heat/AC system are even larger than required by heat only where the return air is cold and more compact. It can also be EXTREMELY difficult if not truly impossible to properly air condition an older 3-floor home with a single unit.

You say it's a "cold house in the winter". If this is mainly because of outdoor air infiltration, forced air will not help the problem--in fact you may well find it worse.

Are you using deep daily setback of the thermostat? If so, such can honestly cause comfort problems--particularly in an older, more leaky house.

Is it cold everywhere or just in certain areas? If just certain areas are these added heated areas (either new space itself or perhaps 3rd floor rooms that used to be unheated)? Do any radiators appear missing or perhaps seem much too small or large for the area they heat?

Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) allow each and every radiator to act as its' own fully independent "zone". They are self-contained, require no wiring and are not particularly expensive.

David_5

Buck the trend

If your house is 220 years old then it was heated with fireplaces when it was built. To me that means the radiators where an add-on. You mention hydro air and zoning. If you have an attic then a system can be put up there to condition the space below. Another system can be put in the basement to do the first floor. I would not put a humidifier in the attic because of the possibilty of feezing and leaks. One humidifier in the basement should handle the whole house. I would consider leaving radiators in the bathrooms and with their own thermostats to make it more comfortable. If the basement is low then a high velocity system will reduce the size of the supply ducts so your not banging your head on ductwork. Lastly, dirty ductwork comes from poor or no filtration. Replace the a good quality filter as needed and your ductwork will never need to be cleaned.

David

David Sutton_6

Seems Dads are right agood deal of the time

There is a lot to balanceing a heating system in a old house. i have done a few very old houses in the mass/conn line.

David Sutton_6

Seems Dads are right agood deal of the time

There is a lot to balanceing a heating system in a old house. i have done a few very old houses in the mass/conn line.This should be looked at and all options addressed.

David Sutton_6

Seems Dads are right agood deal of the time

There is a lot to balanceing a heating system in a old house. i have done a few very old houses in the mass/conn line.This should be looked at and all options addressed.

David Sutton_6

Seems Dads are right agood deal of the time

There is a lot to balanceing a heating system in a old house. i have done a few very old houses in the mass/conn line.This should be looked at and all options addressed.But removing the rads and adding ducts is going to be a major project, and very unsightly....David

J.C.A._3

MTCS,

Do you see a recurring theme here?

I like Jerry's approach myself. Thermostatic radiator valves and tightening the envelope are the best choice I've seen so far. Reset controls and keeping the radiators are most definately in your best interest. The comfort gained by these simple and relatively inexpensive (compared to a system swap) are going to make you very happy. JMHO. Chris

The stages of Dad being right....

1. My Dad knows everything.

2. My Dad doesn't know anything.

3. Maybe he was right......

4. WOW, My Dad knows everything! JCA

Steamhead

You'd be crazy to rip out your rads

Since you say the house is cold in the winter, you haven't "done all you can" to tighten it up. Have a "blower-door test" done on the house. You'll certainly find a lot of leaks that way.

Another advantage of hot-water or steam heat is that it won't pressurize or depressurize different parts of the house. But forced-air will certainly do this unless it's exceptionally well designed. This will result in more air leaking into or out of the house when the system is running.

To clean your radiators, all you need is a flue brush that would normally be used to clean boiler flues. You can probably get one from your plumber or heating contractor.

If, after tightening up the house, the system still doesn't heat some rooms properly, go to the Find a Professional page of this site to locate someone who can fix the problem.

David_5

Wellll

He mentioned a/c in the original post. If there are going to be registers for a/c they can also work for heat. Registers will be less obtrusive than radiators. It is not the system but the installation that makes it comfortable.

David

Steamhead

The problem with ducted heating

is that moving air makes you feel cooler. This is great during the summer cooling season but bad during the heating season. When fuel was cheap you could just turn up the thermostat to compensate for this, but that's no longer an option unless you sit on an oil company's or gas utility's board of directors.

Another problem is if you try to heat and cool a multi-story building with the same ducts, the system will be out of balance at least half the year. The greatest portion of the heating load is on the ground floor, whereas the greatest part of the cooling load is on the top floor. So the distribution will be wrong at least half the time.

Add to this the fact that the typical duct system loses about 20% of what goes into it, thru conduction and leakage. It's much easier to insulate a pipe and make it leak proof.

Advantage: hot water or steam.

David_5

If installed correctly...

If installed correctly warm air is comfortable. Just because alot of ductwork leaks doesn't mean it all has to. The original post said he would like 2 zones so that solves the temperature difference between the floors.
I am not against steam or hot water. In this instance staying with hot water would be the least expensive choice. He could also be comfortable with hot water if the system was properly upgraded. However, if you want A/C,humidification, great air filtration, and don't want radiators then that leads to ductwork. It would be very expensive to do what he is thinking about, but it can be done.

David

joel_19

A/C

I sell LOTS of hydro air systems , but my house has radiant floor heat and radiant baseboard . hydro air will never be as comfortable as the cast rads period . Dust just collects on your rads it doesn't make dust . why don't you just put in a unico A/C and call it a day ? Very unobtrusive , we are doing a 250yold colonial next month converting to steam with Unico hydro air . The steam is totaly shot not worth saving otherwise we'd be keeping the rads. Hey Conn. isn't cold come on up to Northern N. H. in January some time I've seen 22 bellow up there at lunch time with the sun out ! Only goes down from there . Northern Conn shouldn't get bellow o for only a few days a year , down right tropical !

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MTCS

Thanks all for the comments & suggestions.

The rads we have are definately not original (yes, originally the house was heated with its 5 fireplaces) and were badly added sometime last century. My guess is around 1940. Beams were cut to handle the pipes for the upstairs rads, so every 1st floor room has ugly pipes going up to the next two floors. They are not the decorative, period rads typical of "newer" homes say around the turn of the last century. These are functional, grey, big, hulking rads that block the window framing and take up a lot of room.

Our thought is to put two units - one in the basement and one in the attic, which will also give us two zones, one for the first floor and one for the 2nd/3rd. That's good to know about the humidifier only being needed for the downstairs unit. That approach would mean we would not need ducts running through the house - just in the attic crawl space and in the basement.

It is a drafty old girl, our house. We might be able to seal around the doors a bit better but the real issue is that our walls are plank with plaster lathe on the inside, clapboard on the outside. We cannot insulate the walls without losing all of our original molding on the exterior and removing the clapboard.

As for cold - yes, well, NH has us beat but we live on the CT/MA border in the hills and our town is usually the coldest in the state - about 10-15 degrees below Hartford. When the wind gusts up the mountain, you can feel it down to your toes. Luckily we both like the cold!

Wouldn't the benefits of better zoned control somewhat outweigh the increased cost of the system? I realize we could zone upstairs and down separately but we have a closed loop in the basement - I would have to have a second set of pipes run in the basement.

Also, we're concerned about having the registers and returns at the same level (floor on the 1st floor, ceilings on the 2nd/3rd floors) - won't the heat (and later the cooling) just blow by our heads and not really heat the room?

Thanks again --

Ron Schroeder_3

It sound as though your mind was already made up

before you posted. If you were looking for sympathy or support for what you propose, I think you called the wrong number.

with the rapidly rising cost of energy (seee other posts regarding the ballooning gas prices of today) I would suggest that the quest for A/C might soon be academic.

If you insist on going ahead with this retrograde renovation, at least use a condensing boiler and indirect tank to drive your "new" hydro-air heating system. Be prepared to really mess up your character home both during construction and afterward.

Here we extract the darn things like so much a decayed tooth.

Unknown

1. Get a foam insulation contractor out to take a look and see if he can blow foam into your walls without wrecking the place. Pay whatever it costs; it'll pay itself back, and you'll be more comfortable. If you have to, pay a restoration specialist to remove some clapboards for the install and reinstall them afterwards. You're in an uninsulated house... nothing will make it truly comfortable, and it's just plain CRAZY, regardless of how you feel about antiquity, to live in an uninsulated house in this day and age. End of story. It's truly nuts. Figure out what chopping your bill by 3/4 or more will save you (check the fuel prices today first) and figure out how long the payback will be from that... then guess where fuel prices are going.

2. After you do that, you can re-evaluate the heating system and see how you feel about it. Using FHA would be ridiculous if comfort and dust are your complaints; it won't fix either one and will make dust a bigger problem, as many here have said.

MTCS

Fred - no, I didn't have my mind made up before posting. In fact, I was hoping for a better alternative. But not finding one, I've talked to a few contractors about how to best do it.

It's difficult though because of the restrictions of an antique home as old as ours. The blown in insulation is a good thought - I will have to look into that. I don't know as there is any space to blow it in since our walls are plank.

As for being crazy living in a home without insulation - we've been living there for the past seven years, and we love it. Yes, it's cold and drafty, but it is an amazing house with a great feel to it that only comes from 200 years of history.

Thanks all for the suggestions and advice and thoughts!

Jim_55

DONT DO IT !!!!

Dont change over to forced (Scorched) air. I am a homeowner who changed over from F/A to Hot water with cast iron radiators and the comfort level of my house increased dramatically. Also with F/A my children were sick half the time . This past winter I cant remember them being sick at all. The dust and crud in the ductwork was very bad and the house was drafty with hot and cold spots. If I were you I would find a way to keep the radiators and go with an A/C system like the Unico or the ductless split system like Mr. slim by Mitsubishi. I will NEVER EVER buy a house with Forced (scorched) Air. Jim

JeffD

I agree 100%. Last winter we replace our scorched air system with hot water base board heat. Not only did we use about 200 gallons less oil even with it being a colder winter, we stayed much more comfortable. If you really want to get rid on the radiators because of how they look, maybe you want to consider baseboard heat strips as they are much less noticeable. If you go the forced air route, you will not be happy with the level of comfort you get. Zoning can be done properly with FHA, but it is easier and more forgiving of contractor errors if the zoning is done with a hot water system.

Dirk Wright

In terms of indoor air quality, you have to go to FHA in order to filter the dust and other pollutants out of the air. You can also install a UV sterilizer in any new ducting that would kill bacteria, virus' and mold. Hydronic radiant systems may be more comfortable, but they do nothing for IAQ. Your proposed hydronic FA system sounds fine to me, assuming you have the space somewhere for the air handlers and the ducting. New air handlers have ECM motors that make it practical to run the fan, and thus the air filter, continuously at very low speed. Otherwise you can install a Fanhandler to do something similar. Hope this helps. I am not a professional, so take everything I say in that light.

joel_19

insulate!!!!

Absolutly tighten the place up first it's the best thing to do . Get Icynene it's the way to go , then worry about the heat . We need heat about 9 months a year and A/C for only two . Seems kind of backwards to design the system around a need that is only 2 months a year isn't it ? The layout you describe will work fine for hydro air it's done all the time . If you do it make sure there is a return in each bedroom . it will never be as comfortable as good hydronic system but the gods live in the ductwork so make sure if you go that route that the ductwork is well sealed and insulated . remember that type of system is being installed OUTSIDE your home . Yup if it's in the attic it's basicaly outside so ductwork is very critical it can't be over stated.

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