[Summit] Solar electricity and gas heating

[Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur]

Hi Sharon,

We have steam heat radiators, but they are running hot-water heat from a 
gas boiler. We did not do the conversion--we bought the house already 
converted. It is quite odd, but it works fine. When we bought the house, 
we had a very old, small, inefficient boiler, which threw a lot of heat 
in the basement and led to exorbitant utility bills. We have since 
converted to a modern wall-mounted high efficiency system with separate 
Rinnai heat-on-demand water unit. The utility bills definitely went down 
considerably, and though you sometimes have to wait a bit for the water 
to get hot, we never run out of hot water (even if we are running a 
shower and the dishwasher at the same time). If we'd done the hot water 
and the boiler simultaneously, we might have considered single units 
that did both. The new units were expensive, but it really was a 
worthwhile switch. We just had our regular (former) plumber put in the 
units, and the only issue we've had in several years is that the hot 
water unit occasionally needs to be flushed out because a little dirt 
obscures one of the sensors (an easy thing to do yourself if the plumber 
teaches you how).

--Mikaila


Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 16:33:52 -0400
From: Sharon Waldman<slwaldman at cox.net>
To:summit at sna.providence.ri.us
Subject: [Summit] Solar electricity and gas heating


With this in mind, has anyone ever done the conversion with a steam heating
system? If so, how cumbersome, expensive, cost-efficient (long-term), etc.
was it?


-- 
Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
mmlarthur at gmail.com <mailto:mmlarthur at gmail.com>