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Is Steam Inefficient?

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  • Gordy
    Gordy Member Posts: 9,546
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    Hot Water is more flexible as in emitter types, and water temps to drive those different types of emitters. Alternative energy to drive the heat source. Mainly solar being more feasible.
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    Electricity will take over in a couple decades. Fossil fuel heating will be as extinct in 50 years as it's source material.
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    Charlie from wmass said:

    Electricity will take over in a couple decades. Fossil fuel heating will be as extinct in 50 years as it's source material.

    Now you've been listening to the "Green New Deal"! Maybe -- but it's going to take a pretty terrific investment in the grid, never mind the power generation and storage... a steam electric boiler to replace Cedric (they exist) would draw 120 KW...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    SeanBeans
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    @Jamie Hall eco rad would simply electrify each radiator for you like in Quebec. No boiler and room by room temp control PC field out back and you should be all set
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    Charlie from wmass said:

    Electricity will take over in a couple decades. Fossil fuel heating will be as extinct in 50 years as it's source material.

    Well, if we build enough new nuclear plants...
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    @Voyager nice big fusion generator we circle once a year will provide most of what we need. Battery tech will even out the flow.
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    Boy I can get off topic. Steam can be efficient enough to negate any return on investment versus conversion to hot water or forced air. The Sticky Wicket is having a competent contractor work on your system without acting as if they are an artisan.
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    Charlie from wmass said:

    @Jamie Hall eco rad would simply electrify each radiator for you like in Quebec. No boiler and room by room temp control PC field out back and you should be all set

    I don't own enough land to provide the power required ... 54 acres more or less.
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
    Charlie from wmass
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    Current technology is 453 kw per acre
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    Yeah. I misplaced a decimal point. I'd need 5 and half acres. Still, that's all of my tillable land...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    Charlie from wmass said:

    @Voyager nice big fusion generator we circle once a year will provide most of what we need. Battery tech will even out the flow.

    Have you calculated how much battery storage you would need to heat a house overnight on a 14 hour long winter night in the northeast?
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
    edited January 2019
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    Voyager said:

    Charlie from wmass said:

    @Voyager nice big fusion generator we circle once a year will provide most of what we need. Battery tech will even out the flow.

    Have you calculated how much battery storage you would need to heat a house overnight on a 14 hour long winter night in the northeast?
    Doesn't that depend on the house?

    A 2000 sqft house with 6" walls filled with spray foam, very few, but high quality windows and R38 or better in the attic I'm betting can get by with very little.

    Can someone do a heatloss on that real quick? :D
    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    It does depend on the house, of course -- and also a lot of assumptions about the weather, assuming one is talking about local (on-site) storage. Also, as always, what do you want? Do you want to be able (talking New England here) to ride out a nor'easter? Then you're looking at 3 days (72 hours) of no sun at all, near design temperatures, and wind. That's a lot of battery, even for a small house. For Cedric, though, it would be almost 10 megawatt hours. Scribbling on the back of the envelope without my coffee yet...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    ChrisJ said:



    Doesn't that depend on the house?

    A 2000 sqft house with 6" walls filled with spray foam, very few, but high quality windows and R38 or better in the attic I'm betting can get by with very little.

    Can someone do a heatloss on that real quick? :D

    Of course. We are talking a typical steam heated house here, correct? I am guessing it doesn’t have R38 anywhere. LOL.

    You give me the heat loss you think is reasonable and I will do the electricall calculations. Good practice for this retired EE. 😁

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    While you're at it on @ChrisJ 's house, @Voyager , you can double check my calculations -- I'm figuring on a 120 KW input electric steam boiler, and 3 days (72 hours) without power (we've had worse) and no sun and wind and near design day (we've had worse than that, too...).

    The questions and discussion isn't irrelevant, though it is political -- there are some very high profile politicians currently calling for everything in the US to go to renewable electric in the next 11 years...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
    edited January 2019
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    I can tell you exactly what my heatloss is, but I thought we were going with a theoretical future house?


    My actual heatloss at -8F was 72,000 btu/h input I believe, going from memory. That's as per what the Ecosteam required to maintain temperature. It could've been 71,849 or 72,100, but it was approximately 72K. That's for a 1600sqft house built in the 1860s. It's pre-steam in my opinion as it was originally heated by coal stoves.
    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    We can go with any conditions you like, but if the comparison is to a steam boiler, then it needs to be realistic. If you have a house that is super insulated and super tight and loses only 20,000 BTUH, can you even get a steam boiler small enough to make such an installation practical?
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
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    Voyager said:

    We can go with any conditions you like, but if the comparison is to a steam boiler, then it needs to be realistic. If you have a house that is super insulated and super tight and loses only 20,000 BTUH, can you even get a steam boiler small enough to make such an installation practical?

    Oddly enough I thought we were now talking about electric heat and batteries from solar.........
    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    I just want to know if my calculations are in the ballpark... the places I care for are all steam, and being historic structures/museums the odds on converting to anything else are between slim and none. So if I have to go with an electric steam boiler, what kind of battery backup would I need to take the place of the oil tank?
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    But I am not proposing electric steam boilers. I am saying direct heating of each radiator with electric elements in a heat transfer fluid.
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
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    Charlie from wmass said:

    But I am not proposing electric steam boilers. I am saying direct heating of each radiator with electric elements in a heat transfer fluid.

    Essentially, a $60 oil filled radiator. :)
    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
    GordyCanucker
  • Gsmith
    Gsmith Member Posts: 432
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    on a strictly mathematical basis using @ChrisJ's 72,000 btu/hr input at say (arbitrarily) 85% boiler efficiency yields 61,200 btu/hr heat released to the conditioned space of the house. At 1 kW=3,412 btu/hr that heat supply needs 17.9 kW at 100% electric wire to heat efficiency, times 24 hours times 3 days, for @Jamie Hall's nor'easter coverage, means if I did the multiplication right, an energy storage battery of 1,288 kw-hr. And, if it was stored in conventional 12 volt auto batteries, that 1,288 kW would be 1,288 x 1,000 watt-hours / 12 volts = 107,000 amp-hours. or about 180 12-volt 600 amp-hour auto batteries if you could discharge them from completely full to completely empty, which probably won't work but once, so more batteries than that are needed, but you have, I think, the order of magnitude.... several hundred conventional 12-volt batteries (ignoring losses in converting to AC current). Didn't double check the math, but perhaps some one could.
    Charlie from wmass
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
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    Gary Smith said:

    on a strictly mathematical basis using @ChrisJ's 72,000 btu/hr input at say (arbitrarily) 85% boiler efficiency yields 61,200 btu/hr heat released to the conditioned space of the house. At 1 kW=3,412 btu/hr that heat supply needs 17.9 kW at 100% electric wire to heat efficiency, times 24 hours times 3 days, for @Jamie Hall's nor'easter coverage, means if I did the multiplication right, an energy storage battery of 1,288 kw-hr. And, if it was stored in conventional 12 volt auto batteries, that 1,288 kW would be 1,288 x 1,000 watt-hours / 12 volts = 107,000 amp-hours. or about 180 12-volt 600 amp-hour auto batteries if you could discharge them from completely full to completely empty, which probably won't work but once, so more batteries than that are needed, but you have, I think, the order of magnitude.... several hundred conventional 12-volt batteries (ignoring losses in converting to AC current). Didn't double check the math, but perhaps some one could.

    Actually I made a typo.....
    That was output btu/h not input.

    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    Does anyone have access to the Tesla battery information? Also effective efficiency would not be that low as no combustion is occurring. Also no loss to a chimney.
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Charlie from wmass
    Charlie from wmass Member Posts: 4,322
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    www.chromalox.com/en/catalog/industrial-heaters-and-systems/electric-steam-boilers/electric-steam-and-hot-water-boilers?application=com
    Cost is what you spend , value is what you get.

    cell # 413-841-6726
    https://heatinghelp.com/find-a-contractor/detail/charles-garrity-plumbing-and-heating
  • Gsmith
    Gsmith Member Posts: 432
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    @chrisj: no worries, if i calculated correctly the difference is only 15%, still order of magnitude.
  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 23,323
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    Yeah -- the smallest of the CHS series would work. Now to get a new line from the road and building switchgear to handle the 600 amperes needed...
    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    Gary’s calculations look OK to me at first blush. Using Jamie’s 3 day armageddon scenario, you would need 1288 kWh/13.5 kWh = 95.4 Tesla Powerwall storage units.

    According to the web site below, two powerwall units plus associated hardware are $14,500. So, the 96 units needed would only cost $696,000. Assuming, as Gary said, that my calculations are correct.

    The reality is that cost-effective electrical energy storage is still not available. Maybe it will be in 10 years or 50 as postulated earlier, but I doubt it. I think modular nukes are the long range answer to baseload electric generation, but the political climate is currently too much against nuclear power. Although, Bill Gates did come out in support of it recently...

    https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
  • SuperJ
    SuperJ Member Posts: 609
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    If electric heat and battery storage are being considered together, than some sort of heat pump should be part of the mix. Conservatively you can cut your kwh by a factor of at least 3 with a heat pump versus electric resistance heating.

    The exception might be dumping extra PV capacity to a hot water tank with a DC heater.
  • Gsmith
    Gsmith Member Posts: 432
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    yes, but 200 or 300 auto batteries at $100 each would only be about $20,000 to $30,000. Isn't that why fuel oil currently has a big advantage in energy density, and natural gas provided by a utilty system has good reliability even when the power lines are down. MIght be a while before electricity takes over, probably needs a technology breakthrough.
  • ChrisJ
    ChrisJ Member Posts: 15,704
    edited January 2019
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    Since it was brought up, you could in theory build heat pumps using water as refrigerant. Which, in that case would be considered steam heat, technically.............No?

    And those heat pumps would pretty much destroy any equivalent electric hot water system in regards to efficiency. No?
    Single pipe quasi-vapor system. Typical operating pressure 0.14 - 0.43 oz. EcoSteam ES-20 Advanced Control for Residential Steam boilers. Rectorseal Steamaster water treatment
  • Tinman
    Tinman Member Posts: 2,808
    edited January 2019
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    In my perfect home, I'd have at least two heating systems.

    One with low temperature radiant floors paired with a modulating condensing boiler.

    The other, a new steam system.

    As many bell and whistles as I could possibly add to each.

    It would be like a laboratory environment where I could compile solid data comparing comfort and efficiency in the same envelope.

    No. My wife wouldn't mind.
    Steve Minnich
    Charlie from wmassIntplm.Erin Holohan Haskell
  • Voyager
    Voyager Member Posts: 394
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    My perfect house would have a high efficiently water heater that would be used to warm the basement slab through pex and be used under the floor of the bathrooms in the upper stories. This would be used mainly to have warm floors.

    I would then have a well designed forced air system for fast response to outside temp changes, for humidification, for high efficiency air filtering, for fresh air via HRV and for AC.

    I have this now except for whole house humiliation and inslab and underfloor hydronic. If I had those, it would be near perfection.
    Henry
  • Intplm.
    Intplm. Member Posts: 1,965
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    I had a fortunate up bringing. Steam heat in my house as a child. I still miss it to this day.
    An old one pipe steam system. A steam boiler from Sears & Roebock no less .Was great to hear each and every one of those radiators come up to temp. with the quiet sound of the vents shutting off one by one in each room at each radiator.
    The first steam boiler I ever replaced was that boiler with a new steam boiler at the age of 17.
    Folks who have had it wish they still did. Those who have it and it's correct, do not want to change it.
    Steam is efficient.
    Thanks @RayWohlfarth for the topic. Keep it coming.

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