New With a Question

fstalfire · Post by **fstalfire** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 2:10 pm

I currently have oil heat and want to convert to coal...I have an oil fired boiler unit in my house now and the question is......does anyone make a unit that is both a hot air furnace and a boiler?

lsayre · Post by **lsayre** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 2:30 pm

fstalfire wrote:I currently have oil heat and want to convert to coal...I have an oil fired boiler unit in my house now and the question is......does anyone make a unit that is both a hot air furnace and a boiler?

The "anyone" is you! Add a heat exchanger to a furnace plenum and your boiler magically becomes a forced air furnace.

Rick 386 · Post by **Rick 386** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 2:33 pm

Never heard of a combo furnace/boiler.

A boiler will either heat a water tank, or heat baffles which then radiate the heat into the air.

What some guys here do is install a coal boiler then get a water to air heat exchanger (like a car radiator) and install that in a furnace plenum. The furnace blower then blows through the heat exchanger taking the now warm air through the house. The heat exchanger is run as its own separate zone off the boiler.

Rick

Post by **Rob R.** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 2:34 pm

No, there is not a single unit that has a hot air heat exchanger and a pressure vessel as well. But as Larry said, you can use a water-to-air heat exchanger with a boiler to heat air.

Post by **StokerDon** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 2:41 pm

fstalfire wrote:I have an oil fired boiler unit in my house now and the question is......does anyone make a unit that is both a hot air furnace and a boiler?

If you have an oil fired boiler, why would you want to have a hot air furnace?

You just need a coal stoker boiler to heat the water in your current oil fired boiler. The oil boiler is already plumbed in so your house will not know the differance, but your wallet will be happier!

-Don

fstalfire · Post by **fstalfire** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 6:31 pm

StokerDon wrote:
fstalfire wrote:I have an oil fired boiler unit in my house now and the question is......does anyone make a unit that is both a hot air furnace and a boiler?
If you have an oil fired boiler, why would you want to have a hot air furnace?

You just need a coal stoker boiler to heat the water in your current oil fired boiler. The oil boiler is already plumbed in so your house will not know the differance, but your wallet will be happier!

-Don

Don...Thanks for the reply....I wanted the hot air in addition to the heated water in the baseboards to make our living room more comfortable..you said I could hook a new coal boiler to my existing oil boiler? I was going to remove the oil unit all together and plumb in the new coal one and also run 2 ducts to my living space to help make it comfortable, we have an old farmhouse that can be drafty when the wind blows and with just the baseboard heat it still can be chilly hence adding hot air to the baseboards

windyhill4.2 · Post by **windyhill4.2** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 7:44 pm

You can add a water to air heat exchanger ,BUT, an old ,drafty farmhouse would benefit greatly (comfort wise ) by adding several cast iron radiators in strategic locations. That would raise the comfort level far more than blowing hot air around mixing it into the cold air blowing thru .

lzaharis · Post by **lzaharis** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 7:47 pm

If I were you I would just block off the baseboard heat
under the windows. as that is where a lot of your heat is going.

I absolutely despise my baseboard heat and I will have
standard radiators in the next house with a
coal fired steam rated stoker.

The use of base board perimeter heating in my "opinion"
having been stuck with it for 36 years is nothing more
than a money vacuum(insert finger in throat here) where separate
temperature regulated conventional radiators would
certainly be a better way to heat for me and many other folks.

2001Sierra · Post by **2001Sierra** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 7:48 pm

How about replacing under sized fin tube in the cold room with High output fin tube with no need for hot air?

fstalfire · Post by **fstalfire** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 8:00 pm

Wow, some great responses...thanks to all who took the time. So seems as though cast iron radiators are popular. I've no experience with them, what makes them better then base board....just shear mass radiating more heat?

mozz · Post by **mozz** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 8:21 pm

If your boiler is in the basement,and you have access to the floors underneath your living room, I would staple up radiant heat. In theory it sounds good. To get rid of drafts, I would be replacing windows or using a heck of a lot of caulking.

windyhill4.2 · Post by **windyhill4.2** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 9:55 pm

Cast iron radiators hold heat longer,slowly radiating that heat keeping the heat more even,less of the cool down,heat up feel .

rberq · Post by **rberq** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 10:15 pm

windyhill4.2 wrote:Cast iron radiators hold heat longer,slowly radiating that heat keeping the heat more even,less of the cool down,heat up feel .

Love my radiators. My wife thinks they are old fashioned and ugly, but that is one of the few battles she will NEVER win. They take about 12 feet of wall space, but half of that is useless for any other purpose due to room layout. A heating contractor estimated we would have to cover every lineal foot of wall to get the equivalent heat from hot water baseboard, and then it would be touch and go.

Post by **Richard S.** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 11:03 pm

lzaharis wrote:If I were you I would just block off the baseboard heat
under the windows. as that is where a lot of your heat is going.

Setting aside drafts and convection heat moves to cold, that's a law of physics, it's never the other way around. For example if you hold an ice cube in your hand it doesn't get cold because the ice itself is making it cold. It gets cold because the heat in your hand is being conducted into the ice... melting it. You're losing heat.

It's the same thing with your window, assuming its sealed the cold from a window is not coming into the house. As the warm air comes up against it the heat is conducted through the window and radiated to the outside and now it's cold air. Because hot air rises other hot air in the room is going to push that down so now you have column of cold air coming off the window. This is going to happen with or without a radiator under the window.

By placing a radiator under the window you can counteract this column of cold air preventing cold spots in the room. As the column of cold air coming off the window meets the column of warm air from the radiator it merges and is pushed out into the room. That's why you put a radiator under the window. Without the radiator under the window the cold will continue down the wall and spread out over the floor producing a cold spot by the window.

Post by **Richard S.** » Sat. Mar. 01, 2014 11:10 pm

windyhill4.2 wrote:Cast iron radiators hold heat longer,slowly radiating that heat keeping the heat more even,less of the cool down,heat up feel .

We have these huge baseboard radiators, they are nice but really slow to bring up the temperatures compared to copper and aluminum finned.