If your house is more than 50 years old, its HVAC system may
have a little more “character” than 
some newer homes.
some newer homes.
The good news is that, these days, heating older homes can
be as easy and efficient as keeping a modern house warm in the winter. Making
use of today’s heating technologies can go a long way toward keeping your
heating bills down and your family warm during cold weather.
How Your Home is Heated
A lot of older homes are heated with hot water.
If yours is one of them, chances are it relied on gravity to
force warm water up from the boiler and cold water back to be heated. Gravity
and the different temperatures of the water resulted in a natural convection
system that kept the water circulating and being reheated. While this was an
excellent way to for heating older homes at the time they were built, it was
not always the most efficient.
Eventually, circulating pumps came along, which forced the
water to move more quickly through the system. This meant that it wouldn’t have
as much time to cool down before it made its way back to the boiler. The less
heat the water had lost meant the less energy the boiler would use to reheat
the water back to its circulating temperature. Most homes that started with
gravity systems were later fitted with circulating pumps.
Your home’s circulating pump is controlled by a thermostat
which starts and stops the pump once the air in a room reaches the set
temperature. Meanwhile, the temperature of the water from the boiler is
pre-set, usually to about 180° F. By today’s standards, though, even a
circulating pump alone is not the most efficient. Hot water heating systems
contain a lot of water, which must be heated or reheated every time the
thermostat triggers the circulating pump. This is inefficient because the pipes
in the system contain hot water, which continues to heat the house even after
the circulating pump has stopped.
Updating Your Home
A modern solution to this inefficiency is an outdoor-air
reset control. The control keeps tabs on the temperature of outside air, adjusting
the temperature of the water in the boiler to heat the water only as high as
needed for the given day. Because the water is never heated to a temperature
above where it is needed, fuel use is at its most efficient.
You could also improve your home’s heating efficiency even
more by integrating a modulating-condensing boiler into your HVAC system, which
works similarly to an outdoor-reset control, heating only to the degree needed
to keep your house at the set temperature. Regardless, even the most efficient
controls and boilers will not work to their best capacity unless your home’s
windows and doors are properly insulated.
Call the heating pros at Reliable to have your heating system inspected. Our techs will perform an energy audit to evaluate your home’s heating system and recommend ways to improve the system’s efficiency and save you money on your utility bills.