Let's Talk About Heating Shall We?

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support AutomaticWasher.org:

launderess

launderess

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
20,823
Location
Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage
WarmSecondRinse's excellent post in another thread regarding steam heating got me thinking. Since Fall is now here and heating season soon upon us time to start a good natured thread about heating systems past and present.

Here in NYC as in much of the northeast steam is the perhaps the dominate method of heating especially for multi-family/unit buildings including apartment buildings and offices. Problem is many of these systems were designed and installed pre-WWII or even pre-WW1 and many of the old steam-heads are no longer around.

From what one has read steam heating systems especially boilers were vastly over sized back then to accommodate drafty buildings. That and often by local code rooms had to be kept at 70F even with windows wide open in winter. This idea of "ventilation" grew out of the Spanish Flu epidemic. People believed fresh air killed or at least kept the flu bug away.

Now of course these older buildings have had new tightly fitted double or triple pane windows installed and now the sizing for steam is totally off. Problem is finding someone who understands what needs to be done.

Am also fascinated by old steam heat systems that used "vacuum" and coal boilers to get the most out of that source of heat.

Some of my favourite heating bookmarks:

http://fenkoil.ru/721/

http://inspectapedia.com/heat/Steam_Radiator_Piping.php
 
There is a fair

number of homes in my area that are "boiler heat" as I call them. As expected most are well over 60 years old. 2 story, some are even 3. From what I gather, most are gas fired boilers perhaps converted from oil or coal years ago.

There are quite a few US companies still making boilers. I work with a chap that has a late 1890's home with boiler heat. He likes it. Most like the quiteness and even heating.

I've always liked forced air gas but I suppose so long as it keeps you warm, whatever works is ok.

FWIW, my depression era country school had boiler heat. It was either full on or full off! We literally roasted in the blizzard of 78! I mean no matter how cold it was, I guarantee you many of the classrooms had the swing out windows wide open in January.
 
Temp fluctuations from multiple-dwelling steam heat

I assume you have one-pipe steam heat? When we lived in Riverdale in the '80s, I installed thermostatic bleed valves on our radiators. Once I got them adjusted just right, we had even heat instead of the usual swelter-then-freeze cycle. The valve works by controlling the outflow of air out of the radiator when the steam comes up -- if the air flows out slowly, then the radiator warms up gradually instead of all at once. IIRC, my valves came with a control dial and temperature sensor on a separate unit, connected to the valve by a thin tube of some sort, that mounted on the wall. Looks like now the valve and control are sold separately. One example:

http://https//customer.honeywell.com/en-US/pages/product.aspx?cat=HonECC Catalog&pid=V2042HSL10
 
We have natural gas forced air, an Amana high efficiency unit (91% if I remember right) from about 1990 or so, Supplemented by a wood stove in the finished basement. Typical drafty 1950's ranch. The house can be heated properly running the furnace only, but heat comes at a price, so we supplement with the wood stove, which can also heat the house fairly well, but needs to be kept roaring to do so. We are thinking about installing a wood pellet stove upstairs this fall to further cut down on heating expenses. Will see how far that goes.....
 
Steam Heat

The picture of that school reminds me of my grade school, also built in 1931. It had steam heat with bare pipes going up the walls to the next room above, with huge radiators under the windows, those suckers would get hot !!!!! the pipes were multicolored from kids melting crayons on them, but that school was the warmest compared to the 2 new ones built in the late 60's. Only problem was when someone put too much water in the boiler, the place sounded like it was going to blow up !!!
 
There used to be alot of bigger buildings with steam here. My ex-inlaws had a 1 pipe steam system that had to be filled by hand every so often or it made tons of noise. The radiators had a silver thingie on the side that whistled when it got hot, just what you wanted to listen to at 2am. Most of the pipes were rapped in asbestos and it took a costly abatement crew with gowns and masks to clean it out and they ended up as basic 2 pipe hot water systems.
 
A FEW steam ystems

Left in the South, some hot water, mostly hot air, for many years oil was IT,,ow natural gas is popular where available, I love to work on really old oil burners,I don't do heating service anymore for a living, but once in a while I get to fix some old unit no one else will tackle!LOL
 
As mentioned in another thread

While once steam dominated multi-family/large office buildings more and more of the housing market is going with forced air or PTACs.

This is for a host of reasons.

In NYC if the LL provides heat the City has mandates about the heating season as well as day and night minimum temperatures. http://heatwatchnyc.org/tenant_rights.html

With steam heat especially in an older building where there have been changes and or the thing not properly maintained you have the all to common situation. Persons on the lower floors roasting while residents at the top complain they are "cold"

You also have a good number of older persons and or families with children who like it "hot". Well with steam systems depending upon design you are only going to get "on" or "off". That is the boiler will cycle based upon set parameters which in theory should maintain a constant even 70F temp, but then again maybe not.

Some tenants treat the steam valves like a thermostat and open or close them partially to "adjust" the radiator temp. That causes the system to go out of balance. Ditto if too many tenants in a line shut off their radiators.

Partially closing a steam valve causes water to build up in the pipes and then you get that hammer noise which when extreme can sound as if the building will come down.

Any way far easier for the developer or LL to pass heating responsibility and costs onto individual tenants/owners. Problem again in the case of PTAC if run on electric you are going to pay dear from Con Edison.

New properties are also installing something common in Europe but rare in NYC, electric water heaters. Again this helps shift cost of the building away from owner to individual tenants. Nothing will prompt a switch to sailor's showers quicker than a NYC electric bill for using lots of hot water heated via that method.

Many of the new high rise and other apartments buildings are mostly glass construction, so that lets out steam IIRC.

Finally if you go with forced air you can do central air conditioning for full climate control. This is a very big issue atm with new construction as again many of these buildings are glass without opening windows or not man that do.
 
Hot water and steam are still king in the large high rises and skyscrapers in Chicago, but in the smaller buildings it's been going by the wayside one renovation at a time, in favor of forced air so that it can be on separate utilities so tenants can pay their own.

My dads 3 story, 3 unit (1 storefront and 2 apartments) building had the first floor separated from the originally gravity hot water heat system about 12 years ago by the old owner and a gas furnace was installed for that space. The apartments remain to be heated by the original cast iron radiators original from 1915, the boiler was replaced 8 years ago. Most of the windows are original, and the brick building has zero insulation and it shows in the gas bill that runs around 5-600 dollars every January keeping the thermostat at 70. (it used to be 900-1000 dollars with the old 1950s gas boiler)

Both of the buildings besides his still use their original heating systems, one of them was built in 1893 and has 1 pipe steam, still heated entirely by it. The other next to it was built around 1917 and uses hot water like ours.
A few buildings down used to use an earlier variant of 2 pipe steam that used an air vent (the silver thingy on the side that whistles if the system isn't running properly), instead of the steam traps that those systems are more commonly associated with. I believe that system was taken out of service a few years ago.

Around where I live, not a single old house used hot water or steam! If it was built in the 20s-40ss it had gravity flow hot air heating (the kind of system with massive ducts, and a furnace that typically looked like an octopus) Prior to the 20s they probably just used fireplaces and stoves. Actually, hot water heating was most popular around here in the 50s-60s when it was being installed in the form of cast iron baseboard, or more rarely, in floor radiant (my grandmas neighbors house was built with in-slab radiant heating in 1947)

Of course, before the 1950s all of these heating systems used coal! Then in the 50s people were using either oil or natural gas. The house my mother grew up in was built in 1954 and had oil heat, later replaced with natural gas. My grandmothers house was built in 1950 and I believe always had natural gas for heating. The building in Chicago I presume went from coal to natural gas (which the service was always there, as the building originally had gas lighting!)
 
In my area steam heat is almost non existent.Mostly gas,oil and heat pumps.The transmitter building uses transmitter waste heat-warm water heat from two boilers(fuel oil-share with the genset) for heaing.Chillers run year 'round.Summer for cooling-winter to control humidity.The boilers have their own water system-the chillers have theirs.Each is independent of the other.Right now the boilers are off.If it gwets cold enough-they will start.Generally one-the other for backup or if it gets really cold.On my shift have to check the HVAC system to make sure its OK.At home have a heat pump-would love gas heat-but too expensive to put in at this time.Some homes here have propane heat and cooking as well.My home used to have oil heat but the previous owners replaced it years ago.The furnace chimney is still there.Another home on my block uses oil heat-you see the oil truck stopping there.
 
The old

steam radiator systems fascinate me...my elementary school was also built in the '20's and had one pipe steam through most of it, although a couple of newer additions had two pipe hot water going thru them.  I remember when I was in first grade I had to go to the basement to summon the janitor when a classmate barfed and I got to see that huge boiler.  A few years later it was replaced by a new one and got to see it when I was in 8th grade when we were moving some boxes of books from the old coal bin...the new one was much smaller than I remember the old one to be. 

 

Natural gas is very cheap here, and we have budget billing where they take your usage for the previous 12 months and do an average payment amount...I usually pay around $52/month year around...have seen $72/month during coldest winter months but that was before they started the "rolling average".  Everything I have is gas...kitchen range, dryer, water heater, gas grill, and have an unvented gas wall heater for emergency backup should the forced air gas furnace fail or power go out.  The only oil heat I've even heard of around here are the people who burn waste oil in modified oil furnaces/boilers.  A lot of people out of the city use wood or have those outdoor wood-fired boilers.
 
Barfing in school

I remember kids doing that in elementary school. First day of fifth grade was the last time that I remember anyone doing it and nothing in high school. If we were lucky, the teacher caught it, or most of it, in the trash can and then put sheets of drawing paper over it while someone was sent for the janitor to come clean up the floor and trash can. Oh, how I remember the fragrance of pine oil in the mop bucket. In third grade, by classmate Steve Doak was moving toward the teacher who was moving toward him with the trash can in front of her and I remember the perfect arc of puke between his mouth and the trash can. There were some teachers I would have gladly showered with puke, but did not have the opportunity.
 
over my shoulder!

When I was in kindergarten my "sweetheart" was sitting on the floor behind me during a film about Abe Lincoln and she hurled right over my shoulder...Mother came and brought me a clean shirt.  Gross!  We joked about it for 12 years!
 
Heat timer

Steam heating systems in the old NYC apartment buildings (still an awful lot of them around) adjust the heat using a "heat timer". It senses outside temperature, and adjusts the heating duty cycle accordingly.
 
I got steam heat...

I've learned more about steam heat than I ever cared to think I would know....

There are a lot of steam heating experts in the NYC metro area, but you have to be willing to call them and pay. Most buildings don't run or maintain their systems properly which leads to the too hot and too cold problems. Traps on two-pipe systems are the biggest ignored item - they need to be replaced more often than most people realize.

Originally, (probably pre-1925 or so) many systems were sized to heat with windows open due to fear of Spanish Influenza.

One pipe steam is on or off at the radiator valve or else it will leak condensate. Two pipe steam can be adjusted at the valve as hot water can be (and retrofitted with a TRV). You can fit them on the air vent on one-pipe radiators too.

Heat-timers are awful, we just got rid of ours. They don't actually sense the outside temperature, beyond a "no heat required above xx degrees" control - they base the run time on the return temperature. Ours died and we replaced it with a locally made RDS control system which uses sensors (aka thermometers/thermostats) in the units, in our case four. Much more even heat now.

We just had our system analyzed by an expert which has given us marching orders on improvements and repairs. Luckily our 1927 boiler is in good condition, however there has been a lot of knuckleheading within the units over the years - one neighbor has a) original convector in her living room b) an additional convector in her living room and c) and huge extra radiator in her living room. The additional heating units were not needed other than the board was too lazy/cheap to actually maintain and run the system as intended.
 
Different heat timers

Something at the end of a conduit poking out of a basement window was pointed out to me as the heat timer sensor.  This was in a 6-story 42-unit building built in the 1950's.  I was on the board.

 

So your heat timer sensed the return condensate temperature?  That's an averaging thermostat of sorts, I guess, except it didn't get any reading when the steam was down, and it excluded rooms where the radiator or convector was shut off.  How does your current system weight the various thermostat readings?

 

Even if the system gave the overall right amount of heat for my apartment, I hated being hot when the steam was up. Thermostatic bleed valves made a huge difference in my personal comfort level.  The board wasn't interested in installing them for everyone. Having them in use on a substantial fraction of the convectors would've required some adjustment to the system timing and maybe other parameters, I guess.
 
Those Little Twinke Shaped Boxes Poking Out of NYC Buildings

Are outdoor resets that work with the boiler's Aquastat.
http://inspectapedia.com/heat/Aquastats.php

These ODR are designed to save energy by adjusting the firing of boiler based on outdoor temperatures. While the Aquastat will work via programmed times and temperatures the latter is based on inside the boiler.

http://inspectapedia.com/heat/Aquastats.php

For instance as noted above NYC requires a minimum indoor temperature during the day based upon outdoor. You could just set the Aquastat to a specific high and low range for say 6AM to 10PM but what if it is only 40F outdoors. You really don't need to have your boiler firing up all that steam/hot water because indoor temps are not that cold. OTOH if it is say 12F outside you have a different situation. Or if it was 55F then the thing won't come on at all unless the boiler is also firing to make hot water.

These outdoor resets work well with the one pipe, no individual thermostats steam or hot water heating systems found in many NYC buildings.

Sadly TRV (Thermostatically Controlled Radiator Valves) aren't common in NYC buildings. Mostly one imagines because of the system's age and potential costs involved in retrofitting even a six floor building. http://inspectapedia.com/heat/Radiator_Valves.php

Again because so much of the steam heating systems in older buildings are one pipe retrofitting any sort of thermostat can be expensive or perhaps not even possible IIRC.

Then you have inventions like this: http://scienceline.org/2014/05/cranking-down-the-heat/
 
We've had oil, gas, baseboard electric, and forced air electric. The house we bought 3 years ago is a manufactured on its own lot so it has forced air electric at least it's better then base board. I want a heat pump upgrade someday to keep things simple and save some money on utility bills.
I'd prefer 90 percent gas but between all the things needed plus a gas line run probably not a great choice install cost wise.
Out here most homes now use gas, older houses were mostly oil, and cheap starter houses had/have baseboard.
We keep the house warmish in summer and cool in winter plus use a good programmable thermostat and we switched to equal pay to avoid the huge spikes in the bill during cold snaps.
Place is all electric and bill is 124 a month. Have talked to some homeowners on job sites and some really like the new ductless mini split setups, say they are really cheap to run and keep things comfy.
Spose that depends on your electric rates but ours are pretty good, not the best, because PGE convinced everyone in the city a PUD was a bad idea.
One thing I've never had was steam heat, I think some of the old big buildings here used it downtown but not too common in normal sized houses here and our climate is pretty mild most of the time.
Our house is 4 br 1400 sf for comparison if anyone cares and has new double payne windows and decent insulation.
 
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
 

Similar threads

H
Rotex heating system
Replies
0
Views
65
henene4
H
volsboy1
Heat Pump Ameican standard 16 ???
Replies
2
Views
60
gr81nknox
G
volvoguy87
Steam Heat
2
Replies
44
Views
354
toggleswitch
toggleswitch
A
Victorian House Relocation/Restoration
2
Replies
43
Views
431
austinado16
A
Unimatic1140
Let's Talk About Clutches
Replies
18
Views
201
sudsmaster
sudsmaster

Latest posts

Back
Top