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My fiance and I are looking at buying a house with a hot water system with a gas-fired boiler as its primary source of heat. About half of the radiators are original to the house (c. 1930 according to county records,) the other half have been replaced with low profile baseboard units. What do I need to know about maintaining a system like this and is there anything I should ask the inspector to look at specifically? I've lived in houses with every variant of forced hot air but never have had to maintain a hot water system.
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Jan 19, 2020 06:19
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:50 |
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Motronic posted:Uhhh...you shouldn't have opened the furnace to begin with. What kind of bougie-rear end landlord doesn’t expect tenants to be responsible for their own furnace filters? (and pilot lights if the furnace is old enough) Opening the furnace to do basic maintenance is no big deal unless you’re in, like, some student housing where they micromanage every aspect of your life.
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Feb 14, 2020 11:14
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Motronic posted:Properly installed systems don't require opening the furnace to change a filter. Also, when it's a shared system it's typically a building maintenance issue, not a tenant issue. Eh, one of the shitholes I rented definitely had a furnace where the filter was installed in the bottom half by the blower and held in against the intake with little bits of spring steel. It may not have been factory but it definitely looked like it was.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:29
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To understand just how much of a project I’d be getting myself into with a house I might be buying - What would my options be for replumbing an old hot water radiator heating system? Currently it’s two pipe and plumbed mostly with extremely corroded cast iron but also some amount of copper. Some basic research suggests that pex-al-pex home run from each radiator to a manifold in the basement is the modern way of doing it, and as a bonus that would allow for zoned heat between all 3 floors. I’m already resigned to opening up the ceilings since I also have to repair a not insignificant amount of handyman electrical fuckups, but I fear patching up the current system with new cast iron or copper pipe is just kicking the can down the road. Am I on the right path or is there anything else I should be aware of when approaching a repair like this? corgski fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Feb 21, 2020 |
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Feb 21, 2020 07:28
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B-Nasty posted:My kitchen fridge circuit and garage freezer circuits I ran recently are both not GFCI/AFCI protected. Come at me code-bro; I'm not chancing hundreds of dollars of food on 75 cents worth of electrical components made in China. I’m not going to tell you what to do but nuisance trips on modern AFCIs are really overstated these days, mostly by people who are afraid of change. (And by people who insist on using ancient X10 home automation kits.) Your fridge isn’t going to trip an AFCI without an underlying wiring problem.
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May 26, 2020 09:16
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Just a reminder to everyone, DIY secret santa registrations are open! Everyone is welcome to participate, and we're especially looking for ausgoons. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3941260
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Oct 11, 2020 06:21
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Our house came with a Nest thermostat installed. We want to rip it out and put in something that doesn't arbitrarily change the temperature on us or require any sort of data-mining ~cloud services~ for home automation control from within our home. Right now we have a 25 year old hot water radiator system except for the attic bedroom which is electric baseboard, and at some point in the next 5 years we're going to replace it all with a more modern zoned radiant heating setup, and likely add a minisplit or two for cooling in the summer. So what's good in the category of z-wave/zigbee or local wifi-connected thermostats under $200-ish? corgski fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 08:59
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hooah posted:I don't know what "blowing the SSRs in the base" means. The relays that actually send the signal to heat or cool or turn the fan on like to just spontaneously fail on Nests. I had it happen in an old apartment while I was out on tour and it failed on and burned out the AC compressor. Plus like others have said, the actual smart functionality of Nest thermostats isn't actually all that smart. My current house has a nest and radiators and it was so terrible I turned off all the smart features. It constantly overshoots the set point because it has no understanding of how radiant heating works (which mind you, bimetallic thermostats figured a solution to that out well before any of us were born) and until I made it a dumb thermostat it was constantly adjusting the set point down because nobody walked by it in the past hour which is especially miserable when you have a system that's not forced hot air with its instant response. corgski fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 03:10
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wolrah posted:There's no technical reason Nest couldn't have a local REST API on the thermostat itself, it's just a Linux computer with a few GPIOs connected to SSRs, but that doesn't benefit Google and the majority of buyers don't give the slightest bit of a gently caress. I keep hoping someone will release a root and custom firmware for the Nest that does this so I could at least make mine somewhat useful.
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Dec 9, 2020 18:23
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Brand new window units (especially the high-end LG units) are far better than even what we had ten years ago in terms of efficiency and noise, and an order of magnitude better than the 80s and 90s units we all remember but that doesn’t make them good, just less bad. A mini-split or fixing your ducting would be preferable in every way if you can afford the additional expense.
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Dec 16, 2020 20:12
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If you do want to go the diy route buy several of these or similar high output blowers and put something like one in your kitchen and at least two in your basement blowing air through the damp areas. https://www.homedepot.com/p/B-Air-1..._-207012958-_-N Also tear out any soft insulation and drywall that got wet and just replace it after you dry it the structure out. corgski fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 01:11
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Combat Pretzel posted:Friend just asked me, whether Arduinos are generally reliable. No. Combat Pretzel posted:Well, the control board of his gas boiler apparently broke, so he wants to YOLO it on his own with an Arduino controlling the boiler unit (controlling gas valve, pumps, burner unit) Dear god no. Tell your friend to explain to you in great detail what a watchdog is and why it's essential on computerized industrial control systems and even if he somehow answers that correctly tell him to never use an arduino for anything that could kill someone if it goes wrong. corgski fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 23:42
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:50 |
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Settle down, stratdax.
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Apr 11, 2021 02:28
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