Heating and Cooling Options for 1850s Greek Revival New York

Dan_Btek · December 25

Hi Ichamb,best option to heated all house is radiant floor with separate thermostat installed for every room 9but this is most expensive one0 , next one - forced hot air wit hot water coil installed in HVAC units, next-hot water radiators, but all this system must be have PROPERLY CALCULATED for your area .

Adk1guy · December 25

Especially since you have allergies avoid forced hot air. As many have said hydronic heat is premium providing radiant and on and convective heat. The oversized radiation you hopefully hope have play right into a constant circulation modulated temperature system in which the water temperature in the radiators varies relative to the outdoor temperature. I live in the location that is coldest in the country many times per winter. The heating source of choice here is modulating condensing gas boilers. Since we don't have natural gas we use propane.

Bill_44 · December 25

Your friend's father-in-law is correct, except for one thing. Go with ESP (hi-velocity.com) rather than SpacePak. Better equipment and support. They also have an excellent indoor air quality/filter (HE PS) for your allergies. Viessmann is top of the line and surprisingly affordable in the residential sector. There are many reputable Viessmann contractors in NY.

hot_rod · December 25

my vote, keep radiators, add TRV, mod con boiler. Indirect with electric element (solar tank) for back up

AC would depend on the layout and ease of ducting, so maybe a hi-velocity, maybe mini splits.

CTB · December 26

Great insights here! If you decide to go mod-con, consider having the installer use primary/secondary pumping scheme WITH at least one MAGNETIC hydraulic separator. Although there is only one true water loop, flow through the boiler is ensured and you can capture lots of entrained corrosion material (rust) with the magnetic devices. You will have to understand and maintain the system, but if you are taking the time to think ahead, I am sure you would anyway. Most ModCon boilers have a way to adjust outdoor reset temp based on the house's characteristics - x10 on everyone who noted that warm water constantly circulated through <oversized> radiators provides excellent heat.

It's perfectly fine to use another cast iron boiler and have outdoor air reset for water, however, as long as you have a lower limit on temp so there won't be any condensation. I operated a system for 25 years that way, and had low fuel costs ant great comfort until renovations that called for eliminating the chimney led us to install Viessmann ModCon. We added indirect DHW at the same time (not a combi boiler) and the results have been fantastic.

Take some time to create an as-built of the current conditions to identify future zoning opportunities that match how you plan to use the house.

kenjohnson · December 30

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1878913#Comment_1878913

Please keep your old wood windows. The old-growth wood in them will last a hundred years longer (or more). Repairs to pieces on the windows can be made yourself or by a knowledgeable carpenter.

Re: wood window repairs and improvements, I'd recommend "The Window Sash Bible" by Steve Jordan - great book on renovating wood windows. I would get a set of professional scrapers and infrared lead paint removal tools - available from https://www.solventfreepaint.com/. . It is relatively easy and low cost to effectively air seal wooden windows. I removed sash weights from the upper windows (most didn't operate anyways) added 2-1/2" of foam insulation in that part of the pocket and retained lower sash operation. PM me if you would like more details on what I did.

Single-pane windows can have wooden storm windows added. This will double the R-value of the window and increase comfort. Adding indoor shades of some kind will add another R-1 (or more) to the window. Given that a really good new window is probably R-4 or R-5, this gets you most of the way there and costs a lot less than new windows (which will likely look cheap and need replacement in 15 years or so).

I kept most of the wooden windows in my house (except when renovations required new windows). If I replaced all of the large wood windows on the first floor I would have spent another $30k (or more) on good quality Marvin replacements. That was money better spent elsewhere.

jesmed1 · December 30

Let me second what @kenjohnson said about keeping the old windows. I live in/maintain a 1924 4-unit house in the Boston area. Two unit owners (me and one other) had our original wood windows professionally weatherstripped with spring bronze and silicone rubber seals. The other two owners had replacement vinyl windows installed.

We have identical but separate heating systems, one for the half of the house with original windows, and one for the half with replacement windows. Our heating oil consumption is virtually identical. In fact, the other half of the building should be using LESS oil than us, because they get more sun. So I contend that our weatherstripped original windows, with good storm windows, are performing as well or better than their replacement double-pane vinyl windows.

And as Ken said, our windows will last another hundred years. Theirs will be failing in 20 years.

Jamie Hall · December 30

Wonderful to see folks concurring on keeping the old wooden windows!!! Three cheers for our side! Just for giggles — I'm typing this in a room with three old wooden windows… like, 200 years old. And they're just fine, thank you!

DCContrarian · December 30

If wooden double-hung windows are so wonderful, why did we ever stop installing them?

I'm sorry to be Contrarian, but as windows, modern windows are so much better. The old windows swell with the seasons, they stick in the summer and they rattle in their frames in the winter. They leak cold air, even with storms. They need to be painted every five years or so.

Good quality modern windows keep out the cold and are much more soundproof. You don't have to fight them to open and close them. There's just no comparison.

jesmed1 · December 30

Are there good replacement windows available? Yes. Do most people install good replacement windows? No. They install mediocre vinyl windows where the seals fail prematurely and which look kinda crappy. Where for the price of the crappy replacement window, they could have made the original windows perform so much better.

Have most people experienced professionally weatherstripped old wood windows (with spring bronze air seals on the sides, and silicone rubber bulb seals at top, bottom and middle horizontals?) No, they haven't, so they don't know how good the results can be.

Done correctly, an old wood window upgraded like that slides like butter on the spring bronze, does not rattle, is airtight, and feels like you traded your old Hyundai for a Mercedes. It's a night-and-day difference, which most people have never experienced because they don't know it's an option.

Some people may still want a good replacement window even after seeing/operating an old wood window that's been upgraded as I described. That's fine. Buy a good replacement window and be prepared to pay for it. But don't buy a crappy/mediocre vinyl replacement when you could have spent less $$ and gotten better (IMO) results with your original wood windows.

Jamie Hall · December 30

Several reasons that I can think of, @DCContrarian . Maybe more. The primary one, though, is cost. None of us, I think, would argue that restoring an old double hung is going to be cheap. It isn't. Nor is it always all that simple to find a carpenter who is capable of doing the job.

On the cost, it is going to be cheaper — maybe even only half as much — to hire one of the many firms who tout replacement windows to come around, scrap the old windows, slide something which sort of fits in (they're always smaller, by the way, usually by four inches each way), and call it a day. The replacements will work well, as you say, for a decade or maybe even two if you are lucky — and in many cases that will be longer than the current owner plans to stay in the house anyway, so who cares?

Top quality modern replacements are available, of course. They are made to measure, and they fit the existing rough opening. I have had a little experience with them, and they do look as though they may last up to 40 or 50 years before failing. But they cost. Dearly. The advantage to them is that they can be installed by pretty much any good carpenter, rather than a craftsman.

Now where things get interesting and the choices harder is when you are dealing with a house built in the last 50 to 70 years. They often DID have windows which were factory built, and very often those windows can be replaced with new windows with little or no loss of glass area. Equally often, they should be. That's a judgement call.

leonz · December 30

I have to get rid of all my anderson windows because they crank out and are not up to fire code and I will be replacing them with new Anderson double hung windows.

Heating and Cooling Options for 1850s Greek Revival New York

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