A Heating Update
When buying the Cross House in 2014, a huge huge huge concern was how to heat it. The house is scary massive: four floors totaling almost 9,000 square feet. Terrifying!
In 2014, wind blew freely through the house, and snowdrifts inside were common.
Even though the previous owner, Bob, installed $$$$ new boilers for the radiators, numerous radiators were disconnected, and there were numerous broken and burst pipes. I spent almost $30K fully restoring the radiator system, a shocking amount of money. But, I refused to give up on the radiator system, and believe that, over the coming decades, this investment will pay off as radiators are THE best way to heat on old house. Plus—and this is of vital importance—my cats will adore sleeping on the marble slabs topping most of the radiators.
Research that I did in 2014 convinced me that it was a bad idea to insulate the walls, or install storm windows (something the house never really had). This is, of course, wholly contrary to established norms. Being an Aquarian though makes me wary of established norms.
Instead, I learned that sealing the house was vital. Today, after a massive amount of work, the hollow space in the exterior walls acts kinda like a Thermopane window, as dead air space is an ideal insulator. With the windows, rather then order $$$$ custom-made storm windows, I sealed each window after it was restored. This has proved an incredible improvement, with the added bonus of significantly reducing traffic noise (the house abuts a highway), and reducing dirt.
Then, a few years ago I discovered that the plaster walls and ceilings act in tandem with the radiators in absorbing heat, and then radiating it back out. Wow. Wow! So, once the boilers get the house up to the thermostat setting, they shut down. The radiators will continue for some time to provide heat and, after they cool down, the plaster walls/ceilings step in to radiate heat. Only when they, too, cool down will the boilers kick back on.
How friggin’ amazing is this?
I repeat: How friggin’ amazing is this?
Yet, every day, people buy an old house, tear out all the plaster, and replace it with sheetrock. On HGTV, this idiocy is celebrated.
Sigh.
But…sheetrock does not absorb heat. As such, whereby I had planned to install sheetrock where ceilings were lost, and sheetrock where plaster was missing, I now plan to do plaster plaster plaster everywhere.
While the house is now vastly tighter than it was in 2014, the ceilings on the second floor are either missing entirely (the Sewing Room and original bathroom), or punched through with holes (all the other rooms). This means that a lot of my expensively heated air is simply escaping though the ceilings and out of the house. I am convinced that I am helping to increase the winter temperature of Emporia by several degrees.
Sigh.
In 2014, I installed a return duct system, something the house never had. Now, the return ducts, high up a wall in the second-floor stair hall, suck up the expensively heated air, drag it down to the basement level, and push it out though the basement- and first-floor ducts. This is one of the best things I have done for the house.
This year, I will be sealing all the second-floor ceilings, and this should make a huge difference. Then this, combined with the return ducts, will at last allow me to ascertain the actual cost of keeping the house warm in the winter.
This last week has been a roller-coaster ride of emotions and fear as temperatures plummeted to historic lows, culminating in -13 degrees this last Monday night. EEEEEEEK!
Previously, I learned that if the outside temperature was 20-degrees, for example, and even with wind furiously blowing, the boilers could easily keep the house warm and maintain the thermostat setting temperature without running 24/7.
This week though proved this impossible. It was too friggin’ cold and the boilers were unable to keep the house warmed to the thermostat setting even running 24/7. With ceilings sealed, maybe this will prove otherwise.
Still, the inside temperature stayed well above freezing, reaching a low of 47-degrees on Monday. Of course, while 47 is cold, it is much better than 27, for example!
The past two days it has been around 30-degrees outside, and the thermostat setting has been maintained without the boilers running 24/7.
In short, the terror/fear I was experiencing on Monday has been replaced by a degree of calmness. My confidence in the radiator system has returned and I think that, with the ceilings sealed, and all the missing plaster replaced with plaster, I can keep the house warm and affordably so.
I hope. I hope.
Note: My focus on being able to keep the Cross House warm, and affordable so, is not just for my comfort. Rather, I cannot think of a better way to protect the house in the future. A huge old house that cannot be kept warm without bankrupting the owner is a house that will always be in great danger of being demolished.
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Sensible Ross in lovely 9000 square footage of radiated heat!
How wonderful to be seated on a marble top above a radiator holding a kitty cat….
Maybe in receiving room?
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an American hounded out of his country by “patriots”, led the 19th century revolution in thermodynamics. He famously said “… a room is warmed from the walls, and not by radiant heat passing through the air.” This is sometimes restated as “It is the room that warms the air, not the air that warms the room.” Your rigorous thinking through how your enormous pile was heated shows how we can learn again
what David Lyle called in other circumstances “An Old Way of Warming”.
Fascinating! Thank you, John!
Are Rumford fireplaces somehow related to Count Rumbord by chance? 🙂
Yup. Named for him as their inventor. Revolutionized 18th and 19th century London domestic heating–I’ve even seen them in Jefferson’s Monticello. https://www.rumford.com/JeffersonRumfords.html
Ross,
You’ve never said much about the fireplaces in Cross house from a heating point of view. Are they functional, or will they be? Are they sealed up for now?
Just curious.
Hi, Julie!
There are eight fireplaces in the house, and they were originally coal.
None are now in working order.
I do plan to activate the one in the Round Bedroom, which will be my office and where I will spend most of each day. I plan to install a gas insert.
Do you have any detail you can share regarding the return air system? I am considering something similar but I can’t find many examples of something like that being done.
I cannot wait to see the ceilings fixed!!!! It will be as exciting to me as when you were repairing all the shingles- (although I sincerely hope the ceilings won’t be such a chore)!!
Linda, restoring the ceilings will be a chore! It can’t be helped!
Fabulous news! Do I recall something about a heating pipe you’d concealed in a wall, but then brought back out into the open as it had always been? Boy, that decision paid off.
I’m perusing historic, reconditioned radiators in my own home (1904 and originally heated by a ton of small coal stoves). Even with new ductwork going in for AC, and living in the PNW with cheap heat pumps to do our heating, nothing beats the comfort of radiators.
Hi, Jakob!
In the Cross House, all the vertical radiator pipes were hidden inside walls, an expensive but elegant way of handling such pipes, which are normally visible.
In the dining room, two pair of pipes were inside outside walls. These burst at some point, rendering the two radiators in the bedroom above unless. And this is how things remained for a great long time.
I installed new pipes, putting them inside the dining room rather than inside the exterior walls. I hate that they are visible (the room looks just a tad, um, cheaper as a result) but do not regret the decision.
Can you explain in a bit more detail what you mean when you say “seal the ceiling”?
BTW, we have dealt with issues similar to yours with our 1888 Victorian here in Wichita (using a hot water radiator system that was installed about 1915). Does fine to a certain temp point and then below that it’s a struggle to keep comfortably warm, especially if the cold, as it was this last few weeks, is unrelenting and days are without sunshine.
Having properly interlocking weatherstrip on the windows, which most of the house does, is a huge help, but even with that, it’s tough to battle the laws of physics. We have heavy curtains in many windows and use portieres here and there; that keeps drafts down and heat where you want it. We’re always trying to figure ways to keep comfortable!
Warm air goes up and cooler air comes down. This convective method was what a lot (if not most?) later-19th century homes used. No fans, no blowers, just gravity. Warm air rose from the basement furnace in channels in the interior walls (mine are shaped zinc sheets, with one dedicated channel per room), rose to the ceiling where it did its thing, then the cooled air came down and worked its way to a cold air return. Lather, rinse, repeat. Not a bad system, even if rather inefficient. But, coal was pretty cheap and you just kept shoveling it in…..
High ceilings weren’t just for looks; they allowed that warm/cool mixing to take place at a level far enough above one’s head so that air nearer the floor felt more evenly-warmed. And in summer, warm air would gather up there and (one hoped) get pulled out of the room through the opened top sash of a double-hung window.
My sense is that this warm/cool mix idea would work better if one began earlier in the heating season so that anything that could store heat would have a head-start. I know that our place, with all its brick and stone, takes some time to warm up and when we get an early cold snap (or a howler of a cold spell like these last two weeks), if the bricks ain’t warm, things go from nice to miz’able pretty fast.
Speaking of thermal mass, yes: plaster is better than sheetrock. This is partly because it’s thicker (a finished plaster wall, including the lath, is usually 1-to 1-1/4″ thick; typical drywall in home construction is 1/2-inch, sometimes 5/8) and thicker means warmed air lingers longer in the walls, giving you a bit more time to enjoy the radiant benefits. Add to that the fact that plaster is a denser material, by a factor of almost 2, for matching thicknesses, and you see that it’s the better choice. Dense material further slows heat transfer and increases thermal storage capability. Dense+thick = good.
Now, if you’re redoing entire plaster walls and ceilings, you might want to consider newer insulating plasters; these use stuff like perlite or cork or aerogels to up the insulating value; some outfits claim by 2-3 times, but most say at least a 70% increase.
Plaster is also a better sound blocker than drywall: about 50% so. Plus, lime in plaster actually absorbs carbon dioxide from the air (over virtually its entire life, by the way, not just when new). This is a result of lime’s desire to return to its original state — limestone. It needs carbon dioxide to do so. Gypsum does not do this. Limed plaster is thus a greener way to go. Fine cracks can self-heal via carbonation (that lime-to-limestone trick at work again). Plaster is also harder and longer-lasting.
I’ll disagree with you on storm windows, but that’s a topic for another day!
Thanks, David, for your fascinating post.
I’ve never heard of insulating plaster. I can appreciate its useful application in many instances, but it would defeat what I seek from plaster: the ability to act as a heat sink.
Insulating plaster blocks thermal transfer. That is, it slows down the rate at which heat moves through it, by those factors I mentioned. It doesn’t keep heat from entering the plaster; it simply affects how quickly heat moves through it. Think about these R-values to get an idea of what this means: Blown-in fiberglass insulation has an R-value of about 2.5/inch. Fiberglass batts are 4/inch. Closed-cell foam is almost 7. The efficiency of foam comes because heat can’t get through it as quickly as it does through those f’glass options.
The benefit to slow heat movement is that heat stays inside the insulating plaster longer before it passes into whatever is on the other side of the wall. Even on an interior wall, you’d have more time to enjoy the heat in your room because it wouldn’t end up in the wall cavity as quickly. Insulating plaster can also be helpful with cooling because it slows heat in both directions. Cooler inside walls mean lower a/c costs!
There may be engineers around who could calculate the benefit of such things based on how much wall/ceiling is involved. What would likely affect your decision would be the price. Insulating plaster is still relatively new to the market and while it might be a good choice in new construction, replacing old-house plaster isn’t likely to make financial sense.
You mentioned that virtually all your radiator supply pipes are inside the walls. That’s nice for appearance but bad for heat. The pipes are part of the system (both incoming and outgoing pipes carry heat; incoming is warmer, of course). But if, when the original installer calculated radiator sizes, “hidden pipes” weren’t taken into consideration, that might explain, partially, why you’re finding it tough to keep things as warm as you’d like. A pipe inside an interior wall will give very little benefit to the room through which it passes, certainly not as much as if it were out in the open.
You could use copper pipes and keep them nice and shiny. They do that in Topeka at the Capitol, at least in the room Laura Kelly uses for her COVID updates.
Based on the age of your house, I think the pipes were probably inside the wall from day one. Have you any indication that might not have been the case?
A lot of fascinating information here, but unfortunately our house never had plaster. When new, it had 1/2″ tongue and groove installed on every wall and ceiling with a 1/4″ thick layer of what appears to be a compressed cardboard material. Wall and ceiling papers were installed on top of that. Later, probably in the 1950s or 60s, 5/8″ sheetrock was installed on top of that, and this is what we have today. Our walls and ceilings are fairly well-sealed, and since I restored our original windows a couple of years ago (using a lot of tips from Ross) we are in pretty good shape down to single digits outside. Our biggest issue is that our basement is only under the kitchen and pantry at the rear (east) end of the house; the rest of the first floor sits on an unheated crawl space. I have insulted the underside of the floors with roll insulation and plastic sheeting, but last week it was still pretty chilly downstairs, especially when we dipped below zero at night. Our house was originally heated with parlor stoves and one coal-burning fireplace in the dining room; my grandfather’s cousin installed the radiators around 1914 with a coal boiler, and then the gas boiler was put in around 1985. We installed a gas log in the dining room fireplace a few years ago, but were limited due to the small firebox; it puts out some heat, but not heckuva lot. A friend of mine lives in an 1890s house in Texas, and her radiator system froze and busted last week while their power was out; I am thinking that my next big investment here may be a natural gas whole-house generator so that, if we ever lose power for a few days in winter, we do not face the terrible damage that she and her husband have now. They not only lost many of their original radiators, but also a lot of water damage to floors, ceilings, etc.
It makes me wonder exactly what was the expected ambient winter temperature indoors in the late 1800s. I know my family was unalarmed if the nether regions of the old farmhouse were in the 50s, since the kitchen was always toasty warm. And even today we keep our house at only 68 degrees in the winter. I wonder what temperature Mrs. Cross really expected of her sewing room in February.
I’ve had similar thoughts about the “comfort expectations” of the earlier residents of our house. These days, with the expectation that buildings are air-conditioned, we often find it difficult to function well in a warm and humid environment. For some (me!) this is mainly due to physiology. My maternal grandmother, though, loved heat and humidity. She told me that San Antonio was her favorite of all the cities she lived in because it was humid! Ack. I think maybe she had never been in an a/c-ed space (she was born in 1895).
I have never lived in a home with central air (and didn’t even have any sort of cooling apparatus, other than an electric fan, until I was in my 30s), but even in dry climates (25 years in Colorado Springs, Denver, and high-desert California), I would suffer a bit if the humidity rose. So, the best immediate solution for that was probably NOT to move to central Kansas. But doing so did do something for me: my body is now better at tolerating humidity than it was in 1988. Relatively speaking, of course…..
But I often wonder, as sweat rolls into my eyes, if the 19th-century dwellers here had the same experience. Many of them didn’t tolerate humidity well either, probably, but they dealt with it because there was no other practicable option (than sleeping on the back porch or hanging out by the river, perhaps).
Winter expectations would surely be no different. Being dressed for the cold inside one’s house was not seen as the activity of a whacko. I’m sure there were lots of nights when the water pitcher in the kitchen was lightly iced over come morning and folks wondered why they weren’t living in Arizona, but there wouldn’t have been, at least early on, any hope that “cranking up the thermostat” would dramatically alter things. You stoked the fire and heated a brick to put by your feet at bedtime. Mrs. Cross probably did okay with her pins and needles when it was 55 degrees.
Thanks for the nice stories, David.
My mother was born in a small farming town in Scotland. I took her back in the 1980s and, as we were standing in front of the TINY 2-story house she was born in, I asked why it was so small.
“To conserve heat. That’s why the windows are so small, the rooms small, and the ceilings low. It was all about having to heat as small a volume as possible. And the only heat was the kitchen stove, and a small fireplace which we burned peat in. But, it was always FREEZING inside during the winter, and I dreaded having to hop out of bed to pee at 3AM. Everything was like ice!”
Me? I grew up in a 1950s house with forced-air heat. So, listening to her story, I shook my head in wonder.
Also, I was the coldest I ever was while in Scotland. My bones felt chilled, even though the temperature wasn’t that bad. Later, somebody explained that this was due to the high humidity in Scotland. “In winter, if there’s a lot of moisture in the air, you’ll feel frozen.”
A Scot! Fabulous!
Yeah, I lived in northern Europe for 8 or 9 years and I felt the same way. The winter humidity (unlike Kansas!) and lack of daytime sun made 42 degrees feel like 15, even if that’s not what the wind chill actually was. To cap it all off, you’d drop over to visit someone and the room temp was about 52. Even after several warming beverages and an hour’s conversation, you’d still feel cold. We were able to keep our apartment at a higher level, so friends often dropped by for a chat…..it was usually the only time they could take off those giant mufflers and fingerless gloves and enjoy life! LOL.
Small buildings would seem pretty much a necessity in parts of the world where fuel was hard to come by, but most apartments and homes in Europe have quite high ceilings. They tend to rely on insulation and convection to keep things going. Farmhouses, being more in the open, probably suffer from issues with “heat theft.” Add to that the lousy heat value of peat: it only has about 1/6 the energy density of coal. And it takes years to renew; one mm per year is the rate. ONE millimeter!!!! That’s 3000 years to get a 10-foot deep field of it.
I’m surprised your grammie didn’t sleep at night under a pile of sheep.
My grandparent’s 1823 farmhouse was heated by a central kerosene heater and grates in the ceiling for the basically unheated bedrooms upstairs. I remember my grandfather filling it each day with a kerosene can. The kitchen had a big woodstove that was going all the time and that was where you got ready for bed before you dashed upstairs with your water bottle and wool socks. Baths were supplemented with a kettle of boiling water from the woodstove. My grandfather grew up in the house and he said when he was a child they had to make sure the rugs were pinned down by furniture or the west wind would blow up through the floor boards in the front room and lift the rugs. The house we live in now was my husband’s grandparents. It was heated by a central coal stove. His father shared a bedroom with his four brothers and it was often below freezing in the back bedrooms. This little house had no insulation and no plaster. Dimensional 2×4 walls with 3/4 inch tongue and groove planks on the outside and inside too. Stiff and sturdy, but chilly!
I always think about my great-grandparents when it comes to inside comfort… Their rural farmhouse was built in stages, starting in the 1880s and ending with the last addition by G-Grandpa in the mid-1920s. They had a large pot-belly stove in the dining room, which was in the middle of the house; the other rooms were placed around this room, and their only heat was what passed through open doorways. The kitchen had a wood/coal burning cookstove. By the time I came along in ’65, the pot-belly had been replaced by a “Warm Morning” oil-burning heat stove, and the cookstove was an LP gas range. G-Grandpa passed away in 1969, G-Grandma lived on in the old house until shortly before she passed in 1989 (age 96) and never had even a 110v air conditioner. I remember one summer in the late 70s during a particularly vicious heat wave, my grandparents bought a small 110v window a/c and we put it in her dining room window, in spite of her objections. It was so hot in the house that you could hardly breathe; we plugged it in, turned it on, and within an hour the dining room at least was moderately comfortable. We explained how it would turn off on it’s own, and that she didn’t have to do anything to it… We said our goodbyes and left. About a mile down the road, Grandma realized that she had left her purse on her mother’s kitchen counter, so we turned around and went back; we pulled up and got out, and immediately noticed that the a/c was silent. G-Grandma had turned it off as soon as we pulled out of her driveway…she said that she was feeling chilly and was afraid that “that contraption” would give her pneumonia, and she refused to let us turn it back on. I still don’t understand her logic; it was fine to live in rooms that were 55° in the winter, but if a room’s temperature dropped below 90° in summer, it was certain death. Of course, she also felt the same way about indoor bathrooms; she flat-out refused to have one, stating emphatically that using the bathroom indoors was pure laziness, and she was perfectly able to walk the 60′ to the outhouse…
Loving all this detail as I persuade my hubby to leave as much plaster/lathe as possible while we redirect some heating ducts. He’s convinced, so thank you all. Ross, my question is: you say you “sealed” the windows after they were restored. Can you give a bit more detail on how the sealing was done? I’m assuming caulking of some kind on every seam/edge both inside and out? We are about to endeavor this for a large room be restored with a large bay window and 2 large double hungs. The old storms are there as well. Thank you. I always enjoy reading the fascinating detail and learning from THE consummate old house restorer!
Hi, Anne!
I used to seal windows with peel-away caulk.
This is no longer made.
Now, I use four sizes of foam “rope”, from very narrow to very wide. The stuff is great. Then I use Big Stretch caulk for VERY narrow spaces where the foam rope won’t fit.
Same here. Foam rod does a great job and comes away cleanly when its work is done (or when you have a stretch of nice weather and NEED to open the windows for a couple of days of fresh air).
I used the peel-off stuff for a long time and liked how well it sealed things up, but I had to commit to having-it-or-not as warmer weather neared, but was not yet a certainty. That was an annual crapshoot.
Are we talking about this stuff?
Thank you.
Yes, that’s it, Anne.
My house is 6500 sq ft.
We replaced all the windows (yes I know!! We weren’t the purists we are now) . We kept all the stain glass and decorative windows. Put new storm windows on them. Used expanding foam all around the windows.
Put R-70 blown in cellulose in the attic.
Replaced/tightened up the doors. Removed 3 doorways that were later additions.
Tightened the basement.
Closed up the fireplace flues. None are functional now.
I’ve started insulating the eaves with rigid foam insulation to complete an “envelope” in the 3rd floor.
My house was very intimidating that first winter in Maine.
Now it is feasible as a family home again.
I heat the vast majority of it with forced air, wood burning furnace (cheapest option).
I have a gas boiler with cast iron radiators as back-up and a couple of gas fire inserts in case we lose power.
It stays at about 70 degrees. The lowest it’s dropped too this winter has been 65 after the furnace has gone out at night.
When I finish the 3rd floor “envelope” I am going to try heating with just the gas boiler. The wood is a lot of work.
I’ve really been enjoying all your stories.
Thanks for sharing, everybody!
Thank you for providing this friendly forum for our little community to come together and visit with one another. It really does mean a lot, especially in these troubled times we live in…
Funny thing is with an excellent restoration is that it will look right but it will look like you haven’t done a thing! 🙂
I know, Dave! I know!
What about that fourth boiler? Did you ever get it working?
Does the plaster do the same thing in the summer, keeping the house cooler?
Hi, mlaiuppa!
No, I never did get boiler #4 working. Too $$$$!