Heating! How it works here...

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YAY thanks for the view.

and remember, a furnace (fournos, horno, orno) heats air.
a boiler used to make steam; today the word is used even when a heater heats water.

Louis, our heaters tend to be over 50 years of age when they get replaced. Only lately are they replaced just for efficiency reasons.

I see your family name all over the heater. Is your family in that business?
 
My oil-fired steam boiler that also heats domestic hot water.
It is 3 to 4 years of age.

The Riello oil-burning head is Italian and new to this country; burns clean, clean, clean. Look ma no carbon!

The steam flows into a 2" i.d. (5cm wide) main and riser.
(This house is from 1946 and had coal originally).
 
tank

Fuel-oil storage tank of the steel and 275 gallon variety (1,200 litres).

The oil comes in from one pipe, and out air exits to ouside via the other.

There is a whistle in the pipe such that when the tank need more oil,it whistles when being filled. When the whistling stops the oil-man has to turn off the flow! It's full!

(Yes Nate, that is your power-stip sitting there as yet UNSHIPPED!! @#$%^ Can you say lazy and unfocused?)

 
Finally, a non-electirc thermoststic mixing valve (with the Green handle), to keep the domestic hot water at a cool-enough temperature to be safe. It is sometimes called a tempering valve.

The water temperature exceed a safe limit when the boiler is making steam for winter heating.

The valve takes (super) hot and adds cold such that the output temp. is constant (medium hot). Hot from bottom, cold from top, warm out the middle
 
Modern American convetor "radiator" for hydronic (hot water) circulating central heating system).

These are called baseboard heating becaue they literally were made to resemble older baseboard mouldings.

The central flap pulls down to close off the air-flow if one wants to leave a room un-heated.

A 3/4" copper pipe with aluminum fins runs throughout.
 
The sight-glass (between the two red valves) and is to check the water level. In the old days this was done manually. Now, there is an electirc soleoid water valve in the big black box near the wood block on the wall to the side of the boiler that does it for you.

In green to thse side of the boiler(with blck labels) are relays that use low voltage to control line voltage accessories. Here the upper one controld the burner cia 24v thermostat/and aquastat and the lower one run a recircultaing pump (beige, round on left near floor) to push hot water around for basement heating.

The black box in front [that has the wiring going into it] senses the water level and sends power to the solenoid {previously described} as needed, to add water. Should the water level fall too low, this control box cuts power to all operations and the burner.
 
In some areas of the West, wood pellet stoves are (or were) popular. The fuel cost was competitive with oil, gas, and electricity, and automatic pellet feeders made the operation much less work than a wood stick stove would be. Don't know if they are still as popular as they once were, however,

Here in the SF Bay Area, on the coast, natural gas is the most popular heating option, although the temps here would certainly allow heat exchangers. I don't think anyone around here uses oil for heating. Most homes don't have central AC, and many have no AC at all. You'll find heat exchanger AC units further inland, where the summer temps can get a lot higher, but I think they are typically paired with a gas furnace.

My own home has a 1983 gas forced air furnace, 100,000 BTU. Since I insulated the heck out the attic, sealed and insulated the ductwork, etc, it's oversized for the home. The first winter I moved in, the furnace would run almost continously on the coldest evenings. Now it never runs continuously, and is usually on for at most 15 minutes an hour (except of course when it's warming up a house that has been unheated for a day). Eventually I'll replace it with a more efficient lower output unit.
 
Well...VERY WELL!

I wouldn't ever though that a such little duscussed argument would have benn discussed so much... VEY WELL!I'm very happy to have let you take in consideration the heating system...So we shared the argument...

It's true, since people, specially in souhtern Italy, have been installing AC, they started to use it EITHER to heat up their house, the work is electric the same, but now safer than those old electric stoves, sometimes never ground plugged!!!

Toggle, do you see... Riello has arrived in USA either :-))) We always have had Riello furnaces (now GPL fed, natural gas, when we lived in flat).

Louis, VAILLANT, THE BEST! When my parents were just married, we lived in a flat with the centralized heating, but the water you had to heat up by yourself. So my father, rather to install an accumalating electric water heater, decide to install a natural gas water heater in the kitchen, near the other wall cabinets, it's a 1981 Vaillant gas water heater and it still runs, although we haven't let it work again...

Rich, I'm pleasant you appreciate my "new" words, THANKS! It happens often that I can't say a sentence with common words, I don't know why, so I invent new way...that's why my friends say I'm a "neologist"...We considere that english is often shorter than italian... but sometimes it's not so...I was afraid you won't have understood it, but It didn't happen...WELL

Good Bye
Diomede

PS: Do you know Palazzetti? Now with Clam, and other firebox producers are the the most important manufacturer of heating tools.We have got a Palazzetti Ecomonoblocco78, air heating.

 
Steve,

So how would you call that heater? It's a hot water system and it heats the tap water too. A heater/water heater?

Diomede,

I don't think Vaillant is the best brand. They got below average marks in the latest consumer test. And besides that they are well known for their problems, I think that is why the company decided to exchange them for new ones.

Louis
 
Comb-o-matic

Louis:

Perhaps a combo-heater! or combi-heater! LOL
My second boiler picture (with the yellow energy-guide label, a side view) is the coil that produces domestic hot water for the taps).

I don't know why the captions /words disappeared!

The aquastat (water thrermost) shown between the pipes starts the burner to ensure the water output stays hot. This is a beautiful thing during a long, too-hot wasteful American shower! LOL

Methinks energy prices may change some habits, and very soon!

the link is unrelated to this thread, but a more fun combomatic!

 
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