Type of Heat?

[retro-man]

I live in Boston also part time and I am on the 9th floor. I have forced hot air heating, but it is off from a central hot water system. The building was constructed in 1986. The main boiler is on the roof and hot water is run through each unit to an air exchanger. There is a thermostat is the living room which controls the blower. The hot water is constantly circulated through out the building 24/7. As soon as your turn it up the blower starts and instant heat. The same system is used in summer for A/C. There is a tower on the roof for cooling the water that is again circulated 24/7 through the building. It is quite efficient system all year round. Heat and A/C is included in the condo fees. This type of system allows tenants individual comfort as they please. We open windows a lot on sunny days because of the amount of heat the sun generates. I am on the southwest side of the building so I get a lot of solar gains.
Jon

 

[hydralique]

Gas Heaters In Bedrooms . . .

By most building codes, any gas appliance can be installed in a bedroom so long as it is rated for that application. Direct vent heaters such as posted above by Louis are fine because they pull combustion air from outside the building and vent waste gases back to outside. Gas fired manufactured fireplaces are also OK so long as they are direct vent. Regular gas furnaces and manufactured fireplaces are not OK because they pull combustion air from the room and in the event of a flue blockage could potentially keep burning and force combustion gases into the living space.

 

Generally the codes are written so as to not allow any gas-fired device accessed from a sleeping room unless rated for the application. The part about access can be tricky: obviously you can't put a heater closet in a bedroom but the code doesn't address indirect access through a bedroom. The most common place for furnaces in a new house is the attic, and the master closet is often used as an access hatch location since you don't have to worry much about what the hatch looks like on the ceiling. Most inspectors are OK with this, but I've seen a few who won't allow it since access is ultimately through the bedroom.

 

Years ago I worked on a new house where the water heater closet opened into the master bath/closet. This was a huge area of over 1000 sq. ft. with a high vaulted ceiling over normal 8' walls dividing the space below. The inspector threw a tizzy even though the bath/closet had both a second door directly to a hallway and also a pair of french doors to the outside, so the contractor had to install a direct vent water heater.

 

Regarding opening a window due to poor control of steam heating, I first saw this back in the '90s in Dresden at a lovely museum near the city center. It was cold outside but very toasty inside the building's upper floors until I got to one room that was demonstrably cooler. The room had exhibits of small antiques like clocks that were of interest to me so I spent awhile and discovered several windows were cracked open. Presumably the building heat ran off an old DDR era central system and nobody cared much about the waste. No doubt this has been fixed by now but at the time it struck me as bizarre to be opening windows to regulate heat rather than having an effective thermostat.

[this post was last edited: 1/3/2014-10:38]

 

[sudsmaster]

Code may have changed, but back in the 1970's I lived off campus in a house in Berkeley, where the previous tenants had forced the landlord to install separate heaters in each bedroom. These were not direct vent, but rather the more traditional vented type. They worked fine, though. No thermostats, either! Being young and active, and in a 2nd floor bedroom, I don't recall using the room heater much. The others in the house used theirs and that generally was enough heat for me.

At the time I was told that it was a city ordinance the required either a register or a separate heater in each bedroom of a rented house. Before that, all the place had was a single floor heater in the dining/living room area of the 1st floor.