Tag: heat

Frozen Over

January 22, 2014 / / 2 Comments

We got heat in the nick of time, since it got really cold in early January in much of the country. In Chicago, the low of -16° on January 6th beat records. The second floor stayed nice and cozy, thanks to our new boiler and radiators as well as the attic insulation. The rest of the house didn’t fair as well, and we had frozen pipes in the basement, a frozen washing machine, and frozen condensate line and intake on our hot water heater. Fortunately our hot water heater is fancy enough to detect the problem and shut down, as well as display the problem on the screen, making that part easy enough to fix.

Heater in the basement

Heater in the basement

The frozen pipes, on the other hand, required a bit more work. I never put pipe insulation on because we haven’t had our rough plumbing inspection yet, since I’m waiting until we complete rough plumbing on the first floor. That decision proved short sighted. We had relocated our electric heaters to the first floor and basement in an attempt to keep things above freezing, but it’s so drafty there wasn’t much hope. We wound up thawing things out with a heat gun to get the water flowing, and fortunately didn’t have any pipes burst. I don’t know if that’s because the water filter is able to absorb the increase in pressure or just dumb luck. In any case I added not only pipe insulation but pipe heating cable, which wraps around the pipes and uses about 60 watts, compared to the ineffective electric radiators that use about 1,500 watts each. It has a built in thermostat to kick on only when the temperature is below 38°.

Pipe heating cable

Pipe heating cable

However, before we were able to get the insulation installed everywhere, and because they were sold out of the longer lengths of heating cable, not everything was wrapped, so we wound up having a second pipe freeze despite our efforts. The washing machine was another casualty. Since we neglected to turn off the water and drain the hoses, the water inlet valve froze and split apart. When we got back from our vacation I took the thing apart, found the problem, and we bought a new one and and got it installed. We’ve been catching up on laundry the last couple of days and disconnecting the hoses at night when the forecast calls for sub-zero temperatures. We also put a thermometer in the basement to keep track of the how cold it is down there. The good news is it’s staying above freezing in the basement when it’s 5° outside. I’ll try and determine what the danger point is, though there’s obviously a time factor in addition to outside temperature.

Thermometer

Thermometer

Meanwhile we haven’t made much progress on other projects. Between the freezing, a nice vacation to Cancun, and being sick after we got back, January hasn’t been nearly as productive as I had hoped. Instead of working on subfloor I’ve been taking out the old steam pipes, since I need to get them out before I can finish the subfloor anyway. I may do a post about it, but I haven’t taken any pictures yet.

Heat!

January 2, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Oh, finally, finally we have real heat! Up to this point we’ve been relying on a collection of electric heaters meant to supplement rather than stand in and even running four of them and consuming 6,000 watts of electricity in the process, it’s been cold. The insulation helped quite a bit, but ultimately we just needed the radiators working.

Mechanical Panel

Mechanical Panel

Lester finished up the other jobs he’d been working on and started working more seriously on our project. Over the course of a couple weeks he got the mechanical panel built out and the boiler hooked up. We figured out where we were temporarily putting the radiators on the second floor (until we remodel the floor and install in-floor radiant) and Mike helped me mount plywood panels to the wall so we could mount them. We also got the old steam radiators out onto the back porch.

Plywood panels

Plywood panels

I had originally wanted to run the PEX tubing that supplies the radiators through the attic, so Lester was going to put a manifold on the second floor. I decided the manifold could go behind the dishwasher since it’s on the wet wall and that spot will be in the master bath once we remodel. Unfortunately, when I pulled out the dishwasher and cut open the wall I found that spot occupied by five different supply and drain pipes.

All of the pipes

All of the pipes

Instead Lester put the manifold on the first floor and ran the PEX through the first floor. That may complicate things later, such as the plumbing that needs to go right where the manifold is and the ceiling where the tubing is running, but I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there. Top priority was getting heat.

Radiator being warm

Radiator being warm

With the radiators mounted and everything connected, Lester fired up the system and soon it started to get warm. We’ll still use one or two electric heaters if it gets too cold outside since the radiators are sized for our future insulation rather than the current lack thereof, but the difference in warmth and comfort is profound.

We had one hiccup though. After we got back from a long weekend with my family we discovered that the pipes had frozen. I had put an electric heater on the first floor but the circuit tripped so it wasn’t running. Fortunately there was no damage and we got everything thawed back out. This weekend I’m planning to get some pipe heating cable since its much cheaper to run than a 1,500 watt oil-filled electric heater.

Unexpected Insulation

December 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

It’s a very cold December now, and we still don’t have heat. We’re subsisting on electric radiators, both oil-filled and baseboard. However, it dipped down to 10° over the weekend, and they just weren’t cutting it. When I got up Saturday morning, the thermostat in the living room said it was 53°. Sarah decided that we needed to insulate the attic. She said she would do it, but I’ve heard that song before and I know how it goes. With no insulation to speak of, the little heat we did have was going right out the roof. We don’t plan to remodel the second floor for another year or so, so even once we have real heat we’d still be losing a ton of it.

Not insulated

Not insulated

We debated buying the mineral wool batts we plan to eventually put between each floor, but they’re pretty pricey, and we weren’t sure how well taking them out and putting them back in later would work. Ultimately, we went with blown in cellulose because it was drastically cheaper, plus we had some Menards rebates from buying the subfloor that made it even more affordable. Including the machine rental we were out of pocket about $65, so it won’t take much heat savings to recoup. Sarah and I spent the rest of the morning pulling all of the random boards out of the attic (it’s been weeks since we had a scrap wood pile!). Her parents and nephew Aaron showed up in the early afternoon. There were some unexpected delays in getting everything, though, and we didn’t wind up getting the machine set up at the house until 7 pm. It was crunch time, but fortunately the machine was quick: we blew through 20 bags in 30 minutes. Each bag covers 40 square feet with 6″, rated at R-19.

Insulated

Insulated

We discovered that in our rush to take out the boards, we had knocked out the kitchen electric circuit, so I had a follow up job of fixing that. I wound up having to replace a length of BX cable over cloth-wrapped wires with one of our newer cable segments from the massive pile in the basement. Unfortunately that necessitated taking down the ceiling fan in the kitchen to get everything re-wired, but that’s all done now. The house is still cold, 64° as of this writing, but it’s not as bad as it was, and hopefully soon we’ll have real heat. The radiators were delivered earlier today, so now it’s all up to Lester (our radiant heating installer). He’s in the basement right now, hooking stuff up.

Heating Things Up

January 2, 2013 / / 1 Comment

One of the major projects in our remodel is replacing the heating system, and I’ve been thinking more about it recently because our house is chilly. I sometimes feel like living in our old house is actually a trip back in time, where I need to wear a house robe and slippers over layers of clothes just to fend off the cold. Our efforts to weather seal are hindered by a complete absence of insulation in the walls or ceiling.

First floor demoed

Currently we have an inefficient old boiler with steam radiators. There are three radiators on each floor with pipes running through the basement and up through the first floor to reach the second, plus a brick chimney in the center of the house that both the boiler and the water heater share.

The challenge is that we’re remodeling in phases (first floor then second) but we have one heating system. We’re planning to replace it with a new high efficiency boiler (which will direct vent rather than need a chimney) and radiant floor heating, in our case a system of panels that install on top of the subfloor and have pex tubing run through them. In order to finish the first floor, we need to remove the chimney, pipes, and radiators from it. That means that the old heating system will no longer work but the new system would only be installed on the first floor, leaving us without heat on the second floor.

Quik Trak

Because of this I had originally been looking at a radiant heating system that installed under the floor, so we could heat the second floor from below before we remodeled it. There are a few problems with this approach: it’s not as efficient as the above subfloor system because it has to radiate through an extra inch of (non-conductive) wood, we’re planning to replace the plank subfloor with OSB and installing the pex tubing to it would prevent us from doing that, and finally the new system will be sized for the highly-insulated walls we’ll eventually have and most likely will not be powerful enough to heat the second floor until the insulation is installed.

So, how can we heat the second floor if we can’t use the radiators and don’t yet have radiant floors? One option is the forced air system we’re planning to install for air conditioning and ventilation. We could get a furnace rather than a simple air handler and install the ductwork sooner rather than later. Because the ducts will go through the attic and basement, they won’t require significant intrusion into the second floor, just a vertical trunk that would go through our bedroom. It would also give us a supplemental way to heat in the event we ever had a problem with the radiant system. However, we still have the problem that this system, even if we wanted to install it, would most likely be sized for the eventual high levels of insulation, not our current drafty state of affairs and might not be up to the task. It’s also a large up-front expense that we were planning to put off for some time.

That brings us to the other option: space heaters. I started looking at electric baseboard and oil-filled heaters. While not a very cost effective way to heat a home,  neither are our steam radiators. It’s entirely possible that running electric heaters would cost less than running the boiler, considering Chicago’s electric rate just dropped to 5.424¢/kilowatt hour and the fact we’re only heating one floor. Next, I briefly explored the option of an electric heat pump, which is much more efficient and can cool as well as heat, but it also costs ten times as much to buy and for a temporary solution it just doesn’t make sense.

In addition to the operating costs, if we got electric heaters we’d also need to run new wiring to power them, plus we would need at least three of them given they’re limited to 1,500 watts each. Once I started thinking about running three new circuits, it occurred to me that for about the same amount of effort I could run one gas line and put in a vent-free natural gas heater. A gas heater would deliver several times the heat of an electric baseboard and cost much less to operate. Best of all, while not as cheap as baseboards, they’re fairly inexpensive.

GWD308

As with everything, there is a trade off. Vent-free heaters cause increased moisture in the house and can adversely affect indoor air quality. Unfortunately, the direct vent alternatives that put out the same amount of heat cost several times as much and are less efficient. Despite the concerns, vent free is safe and with the house being as drafty as it is I’m not too concerned. They have built in oxygen depletion sensors and we have a carbon monoxide detector as well.

My plan is to get one, install it, and see if it keeps the house warm and if it’s cheaper to operate. If so, we can get rid of the boiler and radiators right away. If not, we can keep using the radiators for now and only switch to the heater for the second floor when we have to remove the chimney.

Boiler Update

October 19, 2011 / / 1 Comment

The weather has been especially fickle as of late. After my initial test firing of the boiler it promptly got warm again and stayed that way for a couple of weeks. When it got colder again, I went to fire up the boiler. Since it worked fine the first time, I didn’t anticipate any problems. Unfortunately, the initial success was not reproducible. I suspected the gas control knob since it had been –shall we say– sticky. In order to find out I had to get a multimeter so I could trace back the electrical connections.

Things seemed to be good. I was getting current, though it seemed a bit erratic, and there wasn’t a clear reason that the burner wouldn’t light. I redo all of the wiring because it was a mess, with old cracked wire and lots of places that could be shorting. Even so, nothing was working. A few days went by and I was running out of things to check and the house was getting cold. Then, Sarah sends me a video while I’m at work.

I ask her to disconnect the thermostat and when I get home I can no longer get any signal from the transformer. So I ordered a new transformer. The house gets colder and colder until we can see our breath while watching TV. Have I mentioned there’s no insulation in this house? Despite paying for rush shipping, the part takes almost a week to arrive.

I install the new transformer and sure enough, the weather suddenly gets warm and then hot. With it eighty degrees in the house, I can’t easily test the system, so I move on to other things. Then this past week, it starts to get cold again. I flipped the switch on the thermostat, went downstairs… and nothing was happening. Incidentally, somewhere in this process I learned that the system is steam, not hot water, so while there is a cold water feeder, it isn’t powered. Everything just runs low voltage.

I break out the multimeter again and test voltage at each connection. Nothing. No juice at all, even out of the new transformer. I test the power coming into the transformer, and the line tester beeps affirmative. It doesn’t make sense. I test resistance between the terminals of the transformer and confirm it isn’t shorted. Finally, I disconnect the new transformer to inspect it and make sure I’m not missing something. Everything looks fine.

Unsure what else to try, I hook the transformer back up. I’m not sure what I did differently, but this time the transformer was live. I connected the wires, testing at each point with the multimeter. Signal is getting through the pressure cutoff, but when it gets to the low water cutoff switch, it stops. It’s in alarm state. The strange thing is that I know the low water cutoff works. If I drain water from the system, it fills it back up. There seems to be a problem with the mechanism that connects the switch to the actual water feeder. According to the documentation, it could be several things, with different parts to replace. Since I know the low water feed is working, I take the chance and simply bypass the switch.

The last stop for the wire is the gas control valve. I turn off the thermostat and reconnect the valve. I relight the pilot. I run back upstairs and switch on the thermostat. As I come back down the stairs I can hear it: the boiler is firing. Finally.

Sarah and I went back upstairs and watched tv. In about half an hour we started hearing noises from the radiators. They started getting warm. They hissed a little. The pipes banged. Most importantly, the house got warm. I checked pressure, made sure it shut off when it reached the right temperature, and it’s continued to work beautifully –if noisily– the last few days. It just needs to make it through this winter. Next year we’ll start work on our massive HVAC undertaking. For now, we have heat. All it cost me was time and about twelve dollars for the transformer.