Individual Gas Heating Units
I am renovating a brownstone with four rental units. I am going to switch from oil to natural gas for the heat and hot water. I am considering installing individual natural gas furnaces and gas meters for each rental unit. Programmable thermostats will give tenants direct control over their heating costs. Has anyone had any…
I am renovating a brownstone with four rental units. I am going to switch from oil to natural gas for the heat and hot water. I am considering installing individual natural gas furnaces and gas meters for each rental unit. Programmable thermostats will give tenants direct control over their heating costs. Has anyone had any experience with installing such units? I have been quoted significantly different prices by two plumbers for the heating units themselves. I am curious what others have paid for these units and for the labor (per unit). The brands I am considering are Weil-Mclain, Goodman, and Trane. Does anyone have any knowledge about the quality of these brands? Thanks in advance for your helpful comments.
To the master plvmber, it sounds like please pass the gas.
Would you pass the grey poupon?
Original poster here: They made me forget my fucking question.
Ed Norton would be so proud of you guys.
Are you guys pretending to be plumbers just to get laid?
Only in Brooklyn will you get Blue Collar workers speaking as if they all graduated from Wharton Business School.
I love you 7:43 pm fort-Greene-living!!!
Please get an account. I’d love to pick your brains.
Master Plvmber and CMU are right!!
What is the OP’s plumber trying to do?
Bake clay pottery in each unit? 130,000 BTU per unit??!! PLEASE have a heat-loss calculation done. Ifd you like you can get free software to do it yourself from Slantfin or heatinghelp.com
Even if such a large unit modulates, it will still only modulate down to 20% at the most (most only go down to 33%), at which point you still have an expensive oversized 43,000 BTU/hr boiler on those fall and spring days when you could conceivably do with much less. How fast a boiler can heat a house is not a measure of it’s efficiency. Efficiency is how much fuel it uses vs. wastes.
One more thing with the modulating boilers is that there is a shift in paradigm involved. You want to properly size the boiler or it will never modulate and condense (which is where the energy savings are) and will just bang on and off like a regular boiler. Bigger is not better in this case.
You also don’t go for deep setbacks (turning down the thermostat significantly in the day or night when people are at work or asleep) since recovery from these setback periods uses more energy (the boiler has to heat water to higher temps and therefore cannot condense). It’s better to allow a modulating condensing boiler to maintain the temp at a steady level more or less all day and night. Although it may seem paradoxical, that can be more fuel efficient than deep setbacks and recoveries of temperature.
I don’t understand.
Install a steam heating system in each apartment?
Isn’t there already ductwork in place?
“Forced air will probably be nearly impossible to set up as a per apartment heating basis.
You’d probably really need to convert to a hot- water-return or steam radiator system to create have apartment heated by its own furnace….but frankly, DON’T do it.”
7:43, you sound like a remarkable engineer who was once very excited about modern technology, but discovered later in life that you would rather return to the little house on the prairie.
7:43, YOU ARE A GOD!!!!! Create an account name and continue to give good and informative information like this and we will be your disciples forever.