# OLD house renovation



## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Started a reno on this 100+ year old house today. It's going to be an interesting job - interesting == difficult.

Went there today and got a list of rad sizes in every room, along with photos. Then I chopped out the old basement piping and boiler. This boiler was installed in 1974 to replace the original (or maybe this was the third boiler?) and (I think) connected to the old piping.









The boiler was a 180MBTU cast iron Hydrotherm with a huge pump - all one zone. After 41 years it still works, but it's pretty worn out. It was vented into a masonry chimney with no liner. I'll be replacing in a new location with something high efficiency and it'll be vented out the side wall.

You can see the old red ceiling-hung expansion tank from the original boiler behind the pipes there. It still had lots of rusty sludge in it and made a huge mess when I took it down - I made the mistake of removing the fittings first in case it needed to be drained.









Old piping was wildly oversized (2" mains) and carefully sloped. I assume that means the original install was a gravity system. I would love to have seen the original boiler. The ceilings (bottom of joists) are only 7', so all the huge old piping has to go.


















The old radiators are beautiful! Someone painted them gold, and it suits. They want to keep these, but this thing is going to be permitted and inspected, so I'm thinking they may stay more as decorations than as functional heating parts. The original heating layout had no heat in some rooms (add-on bathrooms - probably no plumbing in original house), so some baseboard will likely get added, along with some zoning.



























Here's the top floor bathroom.


















And one of the bedroom rads.









Here's what the mechanical room looked like near the end of the day. Ugly dirty job cutting all that old stuff out.


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## plumbdrum (Nov 30, 2013)

Looks like a fun job, keep showing us the progress


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## mtfallsmikey (Jan 11, 2010)

You sure know how to make someone feel old.... We never sold Hydro-Therm, but in 74 we were installing the first gen boilers with flame retention oil burners, Weil McLain's, result of the Arab oil embargo in 73. The boilers were ok, burners sucked. We were replacing mostly pre-WWII boilers then, mostly coal converted to oil. At least you don't have to deal with asbestos insulation


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## Otobeme (Jul 9, 2015)

My favorite heat is panel radiators. I love the old ones. That one is the bathroom is sweet! In my house I have in floor in kitchen and bathrooms, panels radiators everywhere else. Not very popular in Colorado but see them all over Europe.


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## The Dane (Feb 19, 2015)

In Denmark panel radiators is the standard. There is some in floor heat in newer houses but other that that it is almost only panel radiators. They work super, they are quiet and each radiator works as their own zone.


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## Otobeme (Jul 9, 2015)

The Dane said:


> In Denmark panel radiators is the standard. There is some in floor heat in newer houses but other that that it is almost only panel radiators. They work super, they are quiet and each radiator works as their own zone.


In homes when people cannot afford infloor but want to explore baseboard I always bring up panel radiators. Once a year or every other year I will put them in a home. I looked on craiglist in a few different countries in Europe and found them to be cheap. Here no one seems to want to create a market for them and outfitting a house can get pricey. The heat is almost as good as infloor, you have better control and installation is simple.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Otobeme said:


> My favorite heat is panel radiators. ... In my house I have in floor in kitchen and bathrooms, panels radiators everywhere else. Not very popular in Colorado but see them all over Europe.


Ya, they're not very popular here either. I have a super vague memory of connecting one up long, long ago. Might even be a false memory. :laughing: Too long.

I just never see them. Tried to sell some to customers that they would have worked well for long ago. They went for something else - probably radiant.


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## Tommy plumber (Feb 19, 2010)

I bid a re-model on an older 1920's home once not remembering that the walls, floors and beams were all made thicker and more robust years ago. When I had to open the walls, I realized that I made a slight mis-calculation on my bid......

I should have known better since I have cut open walls in the past with old plaster, wire mesh and the horizontal slats of wood. Cutting drywall {sheetrock up north} is like cutting paper compared with the old plaster walls. I swear the wood studs had petrified in the re-model that I did.....:laughing:

Bidding plumbing re-models and large projects is like making love; when you first start, you don't really know what you're doing and you're prone to make mistakes.


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## KoleckeINC (Oct 22, 2011)

Opening walls is 10x easier since I got a Rockwell versacut. It's a mini circ saw.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Tommy plumber said:


> I bid a re-model on an older 1920's home once not remembering that the walls, floors and beams were all made thicker and more robust years ago.


Yup. Dimensional lumber, from when a 2x10 was really a full 2" x 10" or sometimes more. Good stuff but hard to work in.

The problem(s) I'm having with this old house is that we're only renovating the basement. They cheaped out back then and went with "modern" sized lumber, but only 2x8 joists, and on really long spans.  The place is horribly sagged. I'm afraid to drill any joists since they're already mega stressed. Don't want the thing to collapse because of anything I did.

Some of the ABS plumbing done some time in the past has been pushed down by the sagging and has good slope one side of the center beam and negative slope on the other side. I'm trying to fix what I can before it gets covered up and a tenant moves into the basement.



> When I had to open the walls, I realized that I made a slight mis-calculation on my bid......
> 
> I should have known better since I have cut open walls in the past with old plaster, wire mesh and the horizontal slats of wood. Cutting drywall {sheetrock up north} is like cutting paper compared with the old plaster walls. I swear the wood studs had petrified in the re-model that I did.....:laughing:


The words you were looking for were "lath and plaster". There's probably a name for the wire mesh, but I just call it chicken wire because that's what was used a lot of the time.

And hard as hell old lumber under it. Can't nail it - can barely screw it. Drilling holes is tough, but not so bad. Tends to cook the drill bits and the drills.



> Bidding plumbing re-models and large projects is like making love; when you first start, you don't really know what you're doing and you're prone to make mistakes.


Lucky for me I don't have to quote it. All T & M. Just go to work. I give them warning if something they want is going to cost big.


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## bct p&h (Jan 19, 2013)

Tommy plumber said:


> I bid a re-model on an older 1920's home once not remembering that the walls, floors and beams were all made thicker and more robust years ago. When I had to open the walls, I realized that I made a slight mis-calculation on my bid......
> 
> I should have known better since I have cut open walls in the past with old plaster, wire mesh and the horizontal slats of wood. Cutting drywall {sheetrock up north} is like cutting paper compared with the old plaster walls. I swear the wood studs had petrified in the re-model that I did.....:laughing:
> 
> Bidding plumbing re-models and large projects is like making love; when you first start, you don't really know what you're doing and you're prone to make mistakes.


Have you ever tried working in an old Mill? That has to be the hardest wood used for building.


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## jeffreyplumber (Dec 7, 2009)

Thanks for the pictures. Id like to see more , also interested inknowing will the new system be cheaper to operate? how old is the house? Im interested because I dont work in houses that old. also interested in the steam system I never worked on those either.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

jeffreyplumber said:


> Thanks for the pictures. Id like to see more


I'll almost certainly be posting some more pics later for you all to "point and laugh" at. 



> also interested inknowing will the new system be cheaper to operate?


I certainly hope so. I was pretty concerned about running those old radiators with a modern high efficiency modulating condensing boiler. I was talking to my favorite inspector about it (he's a bit older than me) and he told me that those old rads work really well with those fancy new boilers. According to him those rads are high mass and have lots of surface area so they work well without the higher temperatures that baseboard needs to work at to heat well.



> how old is the house? Im interested because I dont work in houses that old.


They told me it's more than 100 years old. I didn't ask exactly when it was built, but maybe I'll remember to ask when I'm there next time.



> also interested in the steam system I never worked on those either.


That's not a steam system. It was always hot water. The original, all big piped and continuously sloped with all rads in parallel was, I think, a gravity system. The 1974 gas boiler retrofit connected up to those same pipes, but used a big pump to make it work. I'm going to be converting the main floor to series piping for one zone and splitting the top floor into two zones. I don't know how the top floor rads are piped, but I assume they'll be parallel as well. 

Since they're not interesting in ripping up the main and upper floors I'm going to go with Honeywell RedLINK wireless thermostats. The one existing thermostat upstairs is in a part of the house that was a later add-on and is getting ripped off, so that stat will be on the outside of an outside wall then. Those don't work so good. :laughing:

I spent over three hours today grinding through Honeywell's horrible cryptic website and Googling hard to find out how to do wireless stats and what to order. Seems like even Honeywell doesn't know how they work. Their site is completely useless at explaining what you need and how it all works - they tend to imply that their parts only work on forced air systems. My supplier was even more useless. But I persevered and I believe I have it all cyphered out and spec'd and have prices coming tomorrow. Any of the three different wireless thermostats they offer, with an HZ311 TrueZONE Panel and a THM4000R1000 wireless adapter, and I should be in business. I hope.


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## jeffreyplumber (Dec 7, 2009)

Great ! Looks like a intersting job, I wouldnt take it because it outside my expertice. Sometimes I like the old houses sometimes I hate them cuz I wind up doing a lot of research that isnt always billable. but I like learning oportunity!


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## paultheplumber1 (May 1, 2014)

There are a ton of those old systems still up and running around here. Those gold painted radiators in the picture are worth a small fortune. And are heavy as hell if you need to move them. Lot of consumed Alieve after those jobs.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

paultheplumber1 said:


> And are heavy as hell if you need to move them.


You got that right. I moved the laundry rad (about 2'x3'x6") so I could pull the AW out to work. I could walk it around, but I don't think I could lift and carry it by myself. Might be able to lift it, but I wouldn't get far. And that's one of the smaller ones!









I wheeled the old 1974 cast iron boiler over to the stairs and realized that two of us were going to have a very bad time trying to even lift that pig, let alone carry it up the stairs and outside. New cast iron boilers are lots lighter. I stripped off the case, pried the sections apart with a bar and carried it out in about 6 trips.


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## Greenguy (Jan 22, 2011)

Futz your in the Vancouver area, have you used IBC boilers yet, if your doing a retro they come preset on the controls for the different materials your heating up. They used to have the head office in East Van, it's over in Burnaby now. They are very similar to the triangle tube's but the controls are a few generations above. It's very easy to setup and maintain.


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## futz (Sep 17, 2009)

Greenguy said:


> Futz your in the Vancouver area, have you used IBC boilers yet, if your doing a retro they come preset on the controls for the different materials your heating up. They used to have the head office in East Van, it's over in Burnaby now. They are very similar to the triangle tube's but the controls are a few generations above. It's very easy to setup and maintain.


I hear lots of nice things about IBC but I've never tried one. I'm pretty comfortable with the Viessmann Vitodens 100s and will probably stay comfortable.  I have no great urge to try something new. Vitos work good for me, and they're what Sherets sells. I do 99% of my buying there and I don't feel like moving. I actually have no idea who sells IBC around here.


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## dhal22 (Jul 30, 2010)

Great job and story. Keep us posted.


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