Forum Archive

Last week I posted a question about my high gas bills.

My DH and I hooked up our radiant heat and indirect water heater to the existing boiler, thinking that we were slowly building our Brownstone Temple of Great Efficiency.

What we got was $165 gas bills in the middle of summer.

We thought we had hooked something up wrong. We used a plumber, but he was not a boiler expert, and had never worked with radiant heat before, and was a friend. It was all very DIY and seat-of-pants.

We hung our heads in shame, figuring that there were issues with how we set it up. We thought the pumps were pumping too hard. That the flow was backwards. Or something.

The good news is that we did a good job hooking everything up.

The bad news is that we didn’t do something simple and wrong. We just need a new boiler.

For all you baby-steps people who are renovating a little bit at a time like us:

Do not hook up your mad efficient new system to your inefficient boiler! Your old boiler doesn’t modulate the flame, so every time your water heater is like three degrees too cold, you’ll be blasting out 110,000 BTUs.