Savings ???? Repipe

Some educated quick guesses:

The 2" bottleneck and lack of vents may be delaying the heating of radiators.

I suspect with some minimal repiping, you can save the customer 5 - 10% in fuel.

If the boiler is over-sized, which most are, and you replace it with a properly sized, properly piped boiler, I'd expect to see a 15 - 20% reduction in fuel consumption.

Converting to hot water, with baseboard radiation may save 15% -30% in fuel costs over the present usage.

Heat loss is probably a good place to start, from there and the weather history you can figure out the current efficiency. it is very likely that heating that space just costs more than they think it should. if it all heats and gets hot relatively quickly nothing you do is going to lower the cost much.

If she wants the chimney gone then there is nothing to discuss except which Mod Con to buy.

If the boiler is surging or has a lot of water hammer or heats slowly the repiping the boiler is probably worth while.

If it runs quiet and heats I wouldn't repipe.

The bottle of Steam Boiler Cleaner may be a tip off

It seems everybody wants there chimney gone but nobody has the bucks to to do a complete upgrade to hot water nor do they want to add a power venter to a atmospheric boiler cause it s to expensive and they want to save room . When i'm faced w that type of non mechanical nonsenses from home owners way before i start wasting time i give them a ball park idea of cost and that some parts of it will require other contractors and that i do not remove chimneys that's some body else's job which also is not for free . Usually that ball park is enough for them to keep the chimney and get it properly lined , I always think your removing your chimney for room ok ya just better moving lol .A few real turn offs for me as a sign thats it time to leave and i m wasting my time is we will be moving soon ,we would like to gain more space and we would like to reduce your fuel usage . I feel that if they have not done any building envelope upgrades in the years they have lived there then how you saving money w the latest and greatest when zero building upgrades have never been performed . pseudo science does not work and speculating is not a science when it comes to money maybe stocks but not mechanically its usually cruel stuff babe

With a steam boiler when sized ,piped and insulated properly w new main and radiator vents theres nothing that can throw as much heat as quietly as a properly installed steam boiler especially for old homes . Now weather there saving going w a new hot water boiler is a slippery slope especially when zero building upgrades have not been done with out which ya gonna need alot of panel rads or baseboard to meet that heat loose . Tough issues for sure .I never guarantee fuel savings w conversions what i offer is comfort .I think thats what we do correct or are suppose to be selling ?

Usually complete repiping and upgrading of a steam boiler will yield the best results in homes which have never had any sort of building upgrades .Properly done nothing in my eye heats high lose spaces as steam does w cost eff , Try that w hot air ,losing space and higher transportations cost for dist. Hot water excellent if using a cast iron using a mod con at high temp forget about it waste and will save only a small amount and yeah ok zero out short cycling and modulation but if ya replacing every 10 to 15 years there is zero saving when it goes to the dump . And i believe that most new hot air furnaces are pretty much pos garbage to boot being just about every contractor says there done at 11 to 15 years being there techs suck at service and seem to offer replacement over proper repair and service , as for mod cons any fuel saving will surely be lost on proper maintenance and service as i have seen from my experience .

The future will be becoming more and more interesting and funny also being the extent some will go ,i love a comedy so i always watch w a smiling face .

peace and good luck clammy

Chimney removal in MA will be upwards of 25k. The scaffolding required is not cheap.
and then you have the interior updates. Is this part of a large renovation?

As to the use of "more better" in post:

" I'd go with @Long Beach Ed 's guesstimates — as tops. If the system is heating reasonably evenly and is quiet, I'd leave it alone as your charges to make it more better will eat up the savings pretty fast."

As to grammar :

“More better” is a grammatically incorrect phrase that means “more more good.” Those who use it intend to communicate that something is “better than better,” but use the wrong word to express this. 

Just a grammatical observation I was corrected on in grade school, even though it sounded correct. By the way, even spell check will remove the word "more" in conjunction with "better"

Regards,

RTW

If money is no issue for her, sure go mod-con. But the cost of a chimney removal, interior updates, removing the entire steam system and installing a hot-water system is going to be some big $$$$$. Sure she will save maybe 30% per month…but it will take longer than the mod-con will last to recoup the savings.

If the boiler is getting older and is oversized a correctly sized replacement and repipe is probably save some money each month.

If the existing boiler isn't grossly oversized and is functioning properly, by fixing the near boiler piping she probably won't save much at all. She will probably just be more comfortable as the system will probably heat up quicker and more evenly.

As I see it, for the steam to have condensed in the header or riser and for that water to be blown into the mains, that water being delivered to the mains and radiator contains less BTU than the dry steam that should be there. The BTUs are not lost; they have been delivered into the building envelope somewhere but they are not being delivered to the radiators, as they should be.

A better way to say this is that condensate-laden wet steam delivered into a radiator holds less latent BTU's than saturated (dry) steam delivered into a radiator.

Or -

A radiator supplied with wet, crappy steam isn't going to emit the same BTUs as it would if supplied with dry steam, although the boiler is burning the same amount of fuel.

Thanks for that. In my observations there is no such thing as wet steam in residential applications. Or more accurately, ALL the steam is wet steam since it is on the verge of condensing, being at 212 or so degrees.

What everyone calls "wet steam" is actually surging/carryover and even if you are surging, then the BTUs will still escape the water as steam and get into the rest of the system (although it's not pretty and should be avoided). The whole idea of what we in this forum call "wet steam" is mythological. Any droplets in the steam fall out and land on the pipes very quickly, regardless of piping or insulation. They are not carried to the radiators. I know people don't believe this but I've seen it.

There is no way that the near boiler piping can radiate enough heat to condense very much water out of the steam, wet or not. The BTUs can't just go into the basement, they go upstairs, there are too many of them for the radiation of the pipes in the basement.

Again, full-blown surging is a different thing (but still must deliver the vast majority of BTUs to the radiators).

Thanks for listening, I'll stop hijacking now.

Many successful installations didn't.

But if you have marginal surging, the header can help keep the water out of the main. If you don't have surging (ie: if your water is good), then you don't need a header. No water droplets will even get to it.

But no reasonable header can stop significant surging (nor should it be seen as a cure for it)

I'll make a video about it and a thread so I am not hijacking innocent victims' threads.

and up the vent because the boiler is running hotter than it should.

Where does the energy in the condensate go? It heats the returns/main and goes back to the boiler. Then what happens if that energy doesn't make it as steam to to the emitters? Does the boiler run hotter?

Also, all the liquid water makes the piping corrode where it normally wouldn't.

you gents aren’t hearing me, but that’s ok, I’ll make a video

it does end up in the conditioned space. There is not enough radiation in the basement even with uninsulated pipes to absorb all that heat that the boiler is producing.

droplets in the pipes will become steam and that steam will go upstairs.

Physics won’t allow steam to collapse to water with all that heat coming into the system.

You guys seem to be saying that if any water touches steam the steam will collapse and its heat will be lost. It cannot be lost. Pretend it’s not me saying this, pretend you are reading it in a book written by a dead person and see if it starts to make sense

We agree on almost everything! I did say "If the main venting is OK" at the very top. Yes if you have no venting, the steam won't leave the basement, we agree.

The steam turning back into condensate reduces the steam volume 1700 times.

yes this occurs, complete agreement, but only until the water heated up by the steam to 212. Then it will no longer collapse any steam. If the water is coming from the boiler, it is already at 212, it won't collapse the steam. They co-exist. But really this whole part is not relevant, I'm not talking about faulty mains that have sags and hold water.

If a boiler is making wet steam it is going to be a lot more difficult to heat and will burn more fuel. The boiler will run longer cycles.

Define "wet steam", you saw my thoughts on it above. Why would the boiler burn more fuel? The BTUs are being generated no matter how wet the steam is. They can't just disappear.

It's like driving a car up against a tree and stepping on the gas . Your burning a lot of fuel but your not getting anywhere. The energy from the fuel your burning is spinning the tires causing friction and heat and the engine temp is headed towards overheating but the car isn't going anywhere.

This is not a car traveling, this is heat being produced and it will go somewhere. Even in your example, you say the energy from the fuel you're burning becomes heat. Again we agree.

The only thing I have to convince you of is that heat, once produced, is going to go somewhere. If it stays in the boiler (as I think all of you are saying), it will turn the water into steam (which is its job anyway), and that steam will flow upstairs.

Are you sure you don't agree with me?

If you don't think you agree with me, I just ask that you tell me where the heat is going from all those little fires under the boiler.

Steam at 212 has 1000btu per pound more energy than water at 212 does. It's thermodynamically favorable for the steam to lose that energy to the water. Everything tries to get to the lowest energy state.

You're ignoring the latent heat of vaporization. Temperature does not equal energy content in phase change materials.

It's favorable to change phase. The heat goes into the pipe at the place that phase change happens.