On Wednesday, June 18, 2014 5:29:59 PM UTC-4, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 6/18/2014 1:00 PM, rangerssuck wrote:

On Wednesday, June 18, 2014 12:20:36 PM UTC-4, jamesgang wrote:



Also that is a fairly large system for that many square feet.

It makes me want to guess there are possibly a lot of single pane

windows and/or poor insulation. Anything you can do to beef up

the house insulation or windows will be well invested too.



There are single pane windows with storms. The insulation in

most rooms is virtually non-existent and beefing that up would

be a huge job. Previous owners had done some sort of foam

injected through drill holes (outside). In the few outside walls

I have opened for various repairs, you can see that the foam has

deteriorated to the point that it's pretty much gone. replacing

it with another foam or blown cellulose would be tough, as

there's enough of the old stuff there that it would impede

the flow of new stuff. There is loose-fill in the attic floor,

and I've thought about beefing that up either by laying fiber-

glass on top or pulling it all out and doing foam. But after

all that, the house will still be plenty hot in the summer.



As far as heat goes, it's gas-fired steam. I hate it, but

it's what I have.





From what I know, gas fired steam is low percent

efficiency. Wastes a heck of a lot of heat up the

chimney. I'd be tempted to take a closer look at

the attic AC unit, and maybe get a high efficiency

furnace up there also. At night you might be able

to turn down the steam, and use 90% natural gas heat.


If he puts in a furnace too, IDK why he would turn down
the steam. Just turn it off. I agree if he goes with the
whole house AC approach, he should look at a combo furnace/AC,
even more so if the existing heat eqpt is old.
The equipment cost difference to add heat isn't much, but
running the gas to the attic would add a considerable amount too.