Just Bought Two Family House - Upstairs Heat Not Working

[jav100]

Hi,

I just bought a two family house, two story house with basement that has one very old American Standard boiler from the 1950s.

The first floor works very well, no problems, but the baseboard units upstairs are not working.

A few plumbers have come by and suggested changing the furnace and multiple ones have said it's probably air.

So the plumber I like suggested installing the automatic air bleeders on all the units upstairs as some don't have a way to bleed, replacing the circulator pump, and also suggested changing piping as the house had an addition put in, and they removed radiators but then just capped the piping that went to those radiators. The plumber says by completely removing those, the system will work much better. His quote to do all this was about $2K-$2.5K. Interesting enough he quoted my under $1K to add the air bleeders and change the cirulator pump, so not sure if the extra money is justified?

To do all that and add a separate zone for upstairs,he wants $5K or less, as it will involve repiping upstairs. He explained the system is a monoflow and when they added the upstairs apartment they broke the loop.

Sorry if I got some terms incorrect, I'm completely a novice when it comes to this stuff.

Can you all let me know if his suggestions are on point and if the price sounds reasonable? He was among the more reasonable but licensed and experienced (claims 40+ years experience). To change the boiler he quoted $4-5K, while others quoted $7-9K!

 

[Diehard]

Not knowing exactly how the pipe continues from the first floor piping to the 2nd floor piping doesn't allow me to help make an overall evaluation. At a minimum, if it's a 2 family house it should have 2 separate temperature controls and 2 separate zones.

I might be incline to try the easiest route to get heat to the 2nd floor first by making sure there is no air in those radiators. Change the return side elbows to vent elbows. HOWEVER, even if you did get heat to those 2nd floor radiators, you have no way to control it if it's not a monoflow system.

 

[PlumbGate]

The amount you quoted sounds really good I'd let him do the work.

 

[jav100]

Thanks both, yes we are adding a seperate zone for upstairs apartment (I didn't actually want to for fear the tenants will jack up heat so we will see how it goes) while keeping one very old boiler. But adding the zoning will "set us up" to seperate the heat down the road if costs get out of control.

I still think we could have managed without zoning by finding a sweet spot for keeping both apartments comfortable but a few people disagree with me. I think I will buy a good thermostat like nest to keep costs reasonable.

We also realized the some pipes feeding the radiators/baseboard units on the first floor are actually in our indoor garage which isnt heat and has an old garage door that is not insulated, so we will be putting on new high quality insulation and replacing the door with an insulated door and monitoring temperature. I might get a portable electric radiator to throw in the if it gets really cold

I went ahead and hired him, he is licensed and his specialty is steam boilers. Our boiler is a 1950s american standard boiler - its apparently rated 80% efficiency

 

[PlumbGate]

Another solution could be you offer "x" amount of credit for heat and if the tenants go over that, they pay the additional. Most people I think would want control over their heat. Only issue is fairly figuring out each party's share.