On paper, there seems to be potential savings. Have you seen the building? No? They you have no idea what is needed to refurbish the building to a new system.
The need to run gas lines to each apartment may be impossible, or nearly so and meet codes. Individual boilers are small and efficient, but they still need some space and vents and probably condensate pumps for the most efficient.
I glad to hear that all of the UK has done this to the old buildings though. More oil for the rest of us.
You guys are talking apples and oranges. The boiler Mike linked to is designed to heat one building. It *is* "decentralized." Industrial and municipal steam systems fit the "centralized" category. There you have long pipe runs to outlying buildings. NYC had an underground line blow not too long ago. I might question using steam depending on the size of the building. Could be a case of "that's how we always did it." Then again the cost of converting to hot water might not work. If it's one pipe steam, probably not. Hot water needs inlet and outlet on the radiators. Steam radiators are usually smaller because steam is hotter. Blah blah. You need an expert to scope that out, and that's not me.
--Vic
Depends on how you use the word. This is a mini-decentralization. What Harry is talking about is having one central boiler to do the entire building, rather than a bunch of smaller, efficient, water heating units, one per apartment. We really are talking about the same thing and one of my projects this year is to look into doing exactly that in our building at work.
There is a section of our building that is about 100 years old. It has sprinklers and must be kept above freezing. Two spaces are rented out. The rest of that building probably never will be rented, but still must be heated.
So far, I've broken off the two tenant spaces and converted them to gas fired water. A portion of the "new" building where our offices are was also heated by the steam boiler. They were taken off and put on to another existing water boiler.
The unused portions of the building just have to be kept from freezing. Part is used for storage, the rest is empty and not practical to rent. The steam boiler runs either two hours a day or four hours, depending on outside temperature. It has never needed more than two 2 hour periods even on the coldest days.
If we wanted to keep the building at say, 68 degrees for occupied space, it would be a no-brainer. With minimal running, the payback for the project will be much longer. It is not just buying the boilers, it is also the piping, partitioning, venting, etc. that must be done.
Exactly. Steam was installed in our building because, at the time it was the most practical. From the boiler in the basement, steam has to move up to three floors plus an attic. Before changes, it had to move horizontally about 200 feet and the up 10 and down 10 for that section of the building. That was already changed over.
We bought this building in 2001 and moved production to it in 2007. The building we have is 180,000 square feet and has every type of heating known to man as it was built from 1890 to 1975 and we started refurbing in 2007. Gas fired steam, two gas fired water heaters. 2 oil fired hot air units, 3 gas fired rooftop heaters (installed 2008). electric baseboard, 5 gas fired unit heaters. The rooftop units replaced some infrared heaters that we could not have with our process.
In addition, we have two 125 hp gas fired process boilers that operate at 110 psi. There is enough heat from the machines that the production area needs no added heat when operating.
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