Let's Talk About Heating Shall We?

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Firing a steam boiler with coal

Made for steam locomotive but same general principles apply.



For those who have never had to bother heating via a coal fed fire is an art. Especially when dealing with steam boilers back in the day.

Today you just flick a switch and the burners (gas or oil) throw a flame. Back in the day you had to know how to get up and keep a fire going, when and how to "bank" it, then how to bring it back to life again.

Automatic stokers were a boon to railroads, homeowners and anyone else who used coal to feed a boiler (which back the was a lot of people). Otherwise someone had to go down into the basement and manually add coal and so forth. If the fire went out say overnight because it wasn't banked properly then there was heck to pay in the morning. Not only did you wake up to a cold or freezing house, but you had to get that fire up again.

OTOH great thing about coal fed fires is you can control by either feeding or starving the thing for air. That is one of the purposes of dampers and the various doors found on boilers.
 
The only difference between a steam locomotive and a steam heating system is that on the locomotive, the higher the pressure, the better. And on a steam heat system, the lower the pressure, the better. High pressure in a steam heat system is actually detrimental to its operation.
 
Banging on the radiator

Is and or was an old New York or any other large urban area from the Mid-west to Maine trick of tenants to complain about heat, or rather lack thereof. *LOL*

Until places like New York City enacted mandatory heating laws for rental apartments tenants were pretty much left at the mercy of their landlords. How much heat and when basically rested with who had control of the thermostat/boilers and that usually was the landlord or perhaps super. The super did what he was told or else he was chewed out or fired.
 
Coal

There is nothing like coal heat !!! ( once you get past the dust and ash ) installed a forced air coal furnace in my sisters house, she loved it ( minus the dust and ash, which she put on her driveway for traction in the snow ) It was an automatic stoker type, using rice coal her house was always nice and warm, keeping her 4 bdrm house at 72 with her little kids cost her 70 dollars during the coldest month. As stated earlier by Laundress if it went out or had to start for the season it could be quite a challenge, once it was going you did not want it to go back out !!!
 
Lol, I had no idea there was so much heating-related humour!

Most of the vagaries associated with steam heat actually only occur when something has gone wrong. Any kind of noise is usually an alarm of one kind or another. Steam heat is actually damn near silent, especially the low pressure, one-pipe, 100+ year old design seen in nearly all pre-WWII 1-3 family homes.

Here's how it works when done right:
1. A steam system is OPEN, not sealed. If you squirted water into a radiator, it'd trickle down to the boiler.
2. First cold snap of the year, the boiler turns on and stays on...
3. the water starts to boil and steam SLOWLY makes its way up the pipes and SLOWLY finds its way into the radiators. The radiator starts to warm up as the steam slowly pushes air in the radiator out into the room. Eventually the steam fills the radiator and the steam hits the air valve (the things that aren't supposed to whistle but do). The air valve has a bi-metal trap door in it and the valve swings shut. This happens first in the radiator closest to the boiler, as one might imagine.
4. With that exit closed, but the same amount of steam still being produced, the steam picks up speed slightly. The process continues in the radiator after radiator until every radiator is full of steam and each radiator's valve is closed. with all the valves closed, the steam has nowhere to go (oh, and since all the radiators are hot, you're getting maximum heat from the system), the pressure builds until it hits maybe 2psi and that hits a pressure switch in the system so the boiler turns off.

Of course, in real life the house could warm up enough any time in the process so the thermostat would turn the boiler off.

Now, in a home one would like all the radiators to warm up at the same time. Therefore the air valve in the radiator FURTHEST from the boiler would have an air valve with the biggest trap door and the radiator closest to the boiler would have the smallest air valve so the "arrival times" of the steam to each radiator are as simultaneous as possible.

That's it. No, seriously... there's nothing more involved in the operating principle. Kindly note that the drama level is zero.

What happens when the system cools down? The steam condenses back into water and starts trickling its way back to the boiler it came from .. using the same pipes. As the radiators cool off, the air valves silently re-open.

A few technical points:
A radiator in a steam system is properly called a "convector". Yet every time I call it that I get blank looks but get corrected when I use "radiator". Go figure.
A steam boiler may run from wood, coal, oil, gas, or even (briefly, just after WWII) electricity. The verbiage is "____(fuel)___ fired steam". My grandparents had oil fired steam but I had gas fired steam.

One must remember how old these systems are. It's quite plausible that 50 years have elapsed since these systems have been looked after by people who knew what they were doing. There's even a book called "The Lost Art of Steam Heat". It focuses on pre-WW ONE systems, IIRC.

Ok, lesson over. Have I made any sense?

Jim
 
Jim, Yes you made a lot of sense.  The part I do not understand is with the system under pressure, how is additional water added to the boiler.  Does the water have to inject at a pressure > than that of the boiler?-A
 
I dream of one day buying a house/building and inheriting a 1 or two pipe w trap steam system and restoring it to like new condition. I would even consider remodeling a home and outfitting it with a brand new 1 pipe steam system. I would have to learn how to be a pipefitter, but I think with the right determination I could do it.

My great aunt told a story not too long ago about how her dad would go to the neighbors and insist on installing central heating for them whether they wanted it or not. (I guess these homes were heated with oil or coal stoves at this time in the 40s-50s). He even installed his own central heating system she said. Of course the best part about this story is that these central heating systems he was putting in for himself and the neighbors were gravity flow hot water systems with cast iron radiators. If you hadn't figured it out by now, he was a pipefitter.

I would fall over and piss myself if my neighbor came by and insisted on installing a hot water heating system in my home...
 
how is additional water added to the boiler

A properly installed and operating steam heat system is a totally enclosed loop with nil to none in terms of moisture loss. The water in boiler that is turned into steam condenses and returns to be reheated and so the cycle goes round and round. However some evaporation does occur an as such either there is an automatic feed water system, or it has to be done manually.

Beauty of automatic systems is they use some of the steam off the boiler to preheat the incoming water. This prevents the dreaded thermal shock caused by introducing too cold water into a hot boiler. Same systems IIRC also will preheat water returning back to the boiler for same reason.

All boilers have sight glass and it is marked for the proper water level. You do *NOT* fill the boiler any higher than that line. If you have a steam boiler/generator iron system the principle is same. As water is heated and becomes steam that vapor expands. Over filling the boiler with water leaves less room for accommodation of this expanded vapor and can cause all sorts of problems.

If you have to continuously add water to a boiler then it means there is a leak somewhere. That is either steam is good amounts is escaping and or water condensate is not returning to boiler.

The huge reason for wanting to keep a closed system is that once boiled/heated water will loose oxygen and thus become less corrosive to not only the inside of boiler but pipes as well. Constantly introducing fresh water adds oxygen which must be dealt with (there are various chemicals that can be added to boiler water). Indeed once the boiler is shut down for say the summer you do *NOT* drain the water. It says what it is until next fall/winter when the boiler is again fired up. This is of course if you are not using the thing during the summer for hot water.

All this being said boilers do need to be skimmed and flushed to keep them clean and properly running.

 
Years ago we were in a rental house that had no insulation and all windows leaked a lot of air. We had one pipe oil fired steam heat. That boiler would heat the house to whatever temp you wanted no matter how cold and windy it was. Had a few problems while we were there. 1st the sight glass broke. Filled the basement with steam. Looked like a steam room. 2nd problem was the valve for the water fill lost its seal. Woke up one morning with water coming out of each radiator in the house all leaking down to the basement. What a mess that was, but must say it was a very quiet and warm system.

Jon
 
Boiler sight glass

A childhood friend had a boiler in his family's single family house (don't know if steam or hot water). We were down there one day and he noticed the water in the sight glass was on the "summer" level though it was winter. He turned a valve, and the basement started to flood. Unturning the valve didn't stop the flow. I didn't stick around to see the aftermath.
 
My house is a 1000 sq. foot raised bungalow with a finished basement. When I bought the house it had baseboard electric as well as a home built wood stove in the basement. The wood stove worked great and heated the entire house because it had a furnace type blower attached to it and then ductwork that went to the living/dining and bathroom areas. I only used the stove when I was home so I was using a combination of wood and electricity. When I heard that electricity rates were going to rise substantially in the next few years I got rid of the wood stove, and baseboard heaters replacing them with hot water baseboards and a propane fire boiler (natural gas not available where I live). It was expensive to install but makes the house very comfortable when it is -30 C outside. I have 5 zones - 3 of which are on programmable thermostats - living/dining, bathroom, master bedroom and 2 with regular thermostats - guest bedroom, lower level. I am on equal billing, paying $260/month for 8 months with propane @ $0.639/litre. This winter the fixed rate is $0.569/litre and my monthly payment has dropped to $200. I also pay $138/month for electric on equal billing.

Gary

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Electric forced air here. I think this was quite common in my area once--the house I grew up in had oil heat originally (built about 1950) but was converted in the 70s. Electricity was apparently dirt cheap here once.

Gas forced air is probably a very common choice now.

Out where I am, gas is not an option (no service).

Heat pumps seem fairly common. I can't say for sure, but I'd suspect people choose gas first these days. But if not an option, they'll go with a heatpump. Winters are mostly mild enough for heatpumps to work acceptably.

Steam and hot water systems exist, but seem to be an "old house thing." I don't think I've ever seen a house out here with radiators that wasn't built well before World War II.

Wood stoves are also not uncommon, either as a primary source of heat, or supplementary/backup. A place where I lived a few years ago was actually built in the 70s as wood-heat only. (The builders were older, Depression era people who'd always used wood heat, I gathered.) The stove even had a coil to heat water, I believe. But at some point, they added a heat pump...maybe after all those years they were tired of splitting wood. LOL

One interesting note about wood heat: apparently in parts of the Tacoma, WA area, old wood stoves will be banned from use on (IIRC) October 1. The reasoning is air quality. There was apparently some program that helped people buy newer stoves, but, of course, only covered part of the expense.
 
In new home builds around here, natural gas is usually the choice if it is available and usually the heat delivery method is forced air however hot water radiant floor heating is becoming a lot more common. If natural gas is not available then it is either propane or oil. Electric baseboards used to be very common because it was the least expensive to install however with the electric rates skyrocketing, builders are moving away from electric. It is not uncommon for homes of 2500 sq. feet, which are heated by electric baseboards, to cost the homeowner $700-800/mth in electricity. I don't know how people can afford it.
 
Schadenfredude...

I'm sure many of you know what that refers to, a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people. Gulity as charged, so let's hear about those sky-high costs of winter heating in the East. It helps me to deal with the electric bill I will receive at the end of next month. Today is the last day of Edison's "reasonable" power period. Tomorrow starts the much more expensive "winter" rate schedule. It is 105 outside, hardly considered winter or even fall.  You should all feel sorry for me 
smiley-wink.gif
 
Gas fired hot air system here. My 10 room house was built in 1897 and had in it a hand fired coal furnace gravity heat. I bet this place was a cold as could be then. The new furnace is sort of noisy but heats very well.
Washman: The high school that I taught in for years had 2 gas fired Kewanee steam boilers that were huge. As far as the steam being on or off was pretty much the same thing that you experienced. There were thermostats that were run off of an air compressor, but didn't seem to work well. I came to school one Mon. morning when the temp. outside was 5 below zero. My classroom was the farthest from the boilers and it was 95 degrees in there. The books and papers in my desk were quite warm to the touch. I had the windows opened a bit all winter long.
My neighbor's house, built in 1903 has a gas fired steam boiler, one pipe system. I really like to hear the buzzing and hissing etc. when the boiler calls for heat.
 
How/When does one add water?

One adds water when the boiler is off. The water pipe leads directly into the system. There's either a knob one opens manually and turns off when the water level is high enough or there's a float switch. Ideally the inlet pipe is run off the water heater. This allows one to add water even when the boiler is hot. Adding cold water to a hot boiler is asking for premature boiler failure.

The system is only under pressure when the boiler is producing heat. Otherwise pressure within the system is 14.7 psi just as it is outside. If one adds one cu. ft. of water to the system, one cu.ft. of air is displaced from the totality of the system through the radiator vents.

You are, of course, correct in that water pressure needs to be greater than that within the system. However, the WWI-era one-pipe systems Launderess at I refer to operate at 1-3 lbs of pressure and municipal water pressure is always rather greater. I was clicking some links and read mention that the steam heating system of the Empire State Building operates at 1.5 :-)

Jim
 
Not a heating boiler-Our GE SW transmitters use vapor cooling for the RF driver,PA and modulator and modulator driver tubes.The tubes are cooled by boiling water in their anode boilers to steam.Better cooling efficiency this way.We can add water to this at any time-even when the tx is running.the water first goes to a resevior tank-then into the system when needed.Would think a comfort heating system could work the same way.A small pump adds the water to the system from the resevior tank when the level gets low in the tube boilers.With the transmitter you have to be careful when adding water to it when you have drained the system for servicing.The power has to be on so the balance resevior pump will run and balance the levels.If the tube boilers get too full-they "boil over" causing "canvas tear" arcs!!
 

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