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Posted by Tony Conner on September 06, 2004 at 08:12:54:
In Reply to: convert boiler from steam to hot water posted by john on August 28, 2004 at 12:22:23:
Unless your steam system has been butchered beyond the point of salvaging it, do some checking. There have been people with steam systems that were noisy, and very expensive to run, who were planning to do what you're proposing. Sometimes for the cost of buying and installing something like a handfull of air vents (a few hundred dollars) they suddenly have a steam system that gives them a nice, quiet warm house, with enormous fuel savings. The alternative can be to convert the entire system to hot water - often in the range of $15,000. The hot water system WILL be more efficient, but nothing in the range that even came close to offseting the payback of fixing the steam system.
A lot of steam systems (residential and industrial) get torn out and replaced un-necessarily simply because many people don't understand steam very well - or at all.