Fixing the heating system - again...

[equusmaximus]

     I've noticed over the last several days that the main part of the house is cooler than it ought to be.  I had (incorrectly) assumed that this was due to the fact that the house is pretty drafty, a problem that I'll deal with as soon as I can afford to.  The thermostat was reading 18.5°c though it was set for 21°c.  It was definitely calling

Comments

[ponyguy]

Could be worse. If you'd had to call a heater repair service to fix it, you'd probably looking at a minimum charge of several hundred dollars.

[equusmaximus]

Believe me, I know!! That's why I was determined to fix the igniter problem myself last week, and this problem myself as well. The plumber here charges $75 an hour, plus milage, and that's actually quite a bit cheaper than a plumber would cost back in Calgary. There's really not that much to a hot-water heating system, once you get past the boiler itself. I won't mess around with the main workings of that, but the electronics side of things I'm quite capable of dealing with. The high cost of hiring the "pros" to do things is pretty much forcing me to learn a lot of new skills.

When that boiler finally goes (and it will) I think we're going to replace the whole system with a new, high-efficiency forced-air furnace. That way we can also have whole-house humidity control, and the option of whole-house A/C as well. Geothermal might even be an option, but the bottom line is we're going to move to forced-air system, whatever the actual source of heat might be. I'll definitely have a professional install that, but

[kevinbunny]

We had a somewhat similar problem here at our hotel, with the industrial-sized water heaters