It's cold outside and FINALLY we've got heat!

Well as you might remember after last winter, my heating system was limping along and I took a gamble to get it through last winter. But as it warmed up I put off the fix, like the true procrastinator that I am, all the way until the beginning of October. Note to self: start sooner next time. By the time they could schedule a time 3 weeks later, I was on the cusp of cold Cincinnati winter weather. In true Cincinnati fashion we went from summer to winter in just a few days.

As you might recall, my circulating heat pump that is a part of my boiler/radiator system was on the verge of failure and my expansion tanks were broken and full of water, which lead to water constantly being relieved from my pressure relief valve. Terribly inefficient way of heating my building despite the 5 year old boiler itself. Here are a few pictures:

In addition, the rocket scientists who renovated my building in the 1970s left this section of radiator piping outside of a wall and blocking part of a window.

And had manual valves that leaked all over the building.

So these were the problems that I hired Geiler to come fix for me.

They moved the pipes into the walls:

Replaced manual valves with automatic ones that bleed air on their own and can be opened and shut easily.

New expansions tanks, shut off valve, fill valve (which the old one was corroded shut), and a new controller that will tell it when to kick on and off more efficiently.

And of course a new workhorse circulating pump to move the water through the building.

So that was the easy part, having them replace all these parts and turning the system back on. Over the course of the next 3 weeks as the temperature outside ranged widely, I began to notice that only certain parts of the building were actually getting heat.

I proceeded to map my entire radiator system to see if I could get a better picture of where was and wasn't working. I was able to determine that the 3rd floor wasn't getting heat, except for a few short runs, and that a few other sections weren't getting heat either. After talking it through on the phone with Geiler, I learned how to bleed air out of the system and eventually was able to get all of the sections working except two long runs on the 3rd floor, including the one that ran through my bedroom. I just kept bleeding and bleeding the air until the hot water would get sucked to that section, but then it would go back down and the pipes would turn cold again in the middle of the night.

It was terrible and even with a space heater my bedroom was only getting to 60-62 degrees. It was a long couple weeks as I tried to figure out the problem, not wanting to spend extra money to have them come back out.

The more I tinkered with it and talked on the phone with Geiler, we came to a consensus that the problem was a lack of pressure in the system to get the hot water all the way to the top. They came out for free and reset the expansion tanks and fill valve for the higher pressure and helped me bleed the last bit of air out of the system so that it all heated properly. Here's the celebratory Snapchat after bleeding the last bit of air out.

I'm still going to insulate my basement pipes better, because a lot of heat is being wasted in the basement right now, but this should just make my system more efficient. The heat is working fine now and it should be a warm winter FINALLY!