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Whatever is in the basement, we have read one like it
Boilers, radiators, baseboard, radiant floors, furnaces and heat pumps — in Boulder houses from 1905 and from 2015, treated the same way: survey first, then a price in writing.
The calls, in order of how often they come
- One radiator is coldUsually air, sometimes a valve, occasionally a balancing problem created when somebody added a zone. Cheap to diagnose, and worth doing before winter rather than during it.
- The whole system is coldA no-heat call. Ignition, a circulator, a zone valve, a control or a safety that has done its job. Diagnosed with instruments and priced before we start.
- It bangsOn steam, almost always water sitting where steam wants to travel. On hot water, usually air or a pipe that has nothing to expand into. Both are fixable and neither should be ignored.
- The boiler keeps starting and stoppingShort cycling. Hard on the boiler, and on an old system usually a controls or sizing problem rather than a broken part.
- Upstairs roasts, downstairs freezesBalancing. On a converted gravity system it can be original, in which case it has been wrong since the 1930s and can still be put right.
- The furnace is twenty years oldPlenty of houses here have forced air, and the answer is the same: what it has left, what to budget, in writing.
There is still steam heat in this town
Not much, but enough that it matters if yours is one of them. Steam is not a worse system than hot water — it is a different one, and it fails in ways that hot water never does.
Most of what gets called "an old steam boiler being an old steam boiler" is venting: air that has to leave the pipework before steam can fill it, through vents nobody has replaced in decades. That is a service job, not a replacement.
- What we checkVent sizes and condition, pressure settings, the water line, traps on a two-pipe system, and the pitch of the returns.
- What we will not doRaise the pressure to force heat round a system. It costs fuel, it makes the banging worse, and it treats a symptom.
- What we will sayIf the boiler is genuinely at the end, we will say so plainly and explain what replacing it involves on a steam system, which is more than swapping a box.
Three things that do not wait
- A carbon monoxide alarm soundingEverybody out of the house, then call 911 or the gas utility from outside. Not us first, and do not go back in to open windows.
- A smell of gasThe same. Leave the appliance alone, get out, ring from outside.
- A relief valve dischargingIf a pressure relief valve is dripping or blowing, that is a safety device doing its job because something else is wrong. Do not cap it, do not wedge it. Shut the system down and call.
Once the first two are made safe, we will come and find out what caused them. The third we will take today.
Three zones, one boiler, and nobody agrees
Zoning an old system is the commonest improvement made to one, and it is the commonest source of new problems. Zone valves that stick, a circulator that was right for one zone and not for three, and controls that call for heat faster than the boiler can sensibly respond.
In-floor radiant adds its own: it is slow on purpose, and a control set up as though it were forced air will chase the temperature all day and never settle.