I just moved into a new house (it's 80 years old!) and it has boiler heat. I have never encountered this type of heating system before, and I'm a little clueless as to how it all works and how to care for it. I had someone out to service it before I bought the house to make sure it was working ok, but he only checks the boiler itself, not the radiators located throughout the house. Now that it's cooling off I decided to test out the heat, and I'm not getting any heat out of the radiators. I've had people tell me to bleed the radiators, which I TRIED to do, but nothing came out except for a hiss of air, and that was it. Should I let the boiler run for a while and THEN try to bleed them? Any advice or info on boiler heat systems will be most appreciated. I want to figure out how to get the house warm before winter hits!
on a hwboiler there are a couple of things you should look for. there is a pressure gauge usually mounted on the top front of the boiler. check it out it should read 10-15 psi. if it does the keep bleeding the rads til they spit nout water. if it is not on that psi there is a feed valve it usually looks like a set of bells hanging on a pipe. before them is a hand operated valve make sure that it is open. as long as the gauge reads pressure u should be able to get the air out. then make sure the oil or gas burner fires up. set the thermo above the room temp and wait for the circulator pump to kick in. basically if all of these components are functioning properly you shoul be in good shape
You didn't mention if it is a steam or hot water system. A steam system will have only one pipe going into it as the condensed steam (water) will flow back through the same line to the boiler, Hot water system will have a line in on one side and a line out on the other end as the radiator is full of water at all times and may have a pump at the boiler to move the water through the system, it could be a gravity flow system where the water flows by its self as hot water rises but is very slow. in either system there can be air trapped in the radiators and wil have to be bled out which could take a while. My advice to you is to have a heating contractor come in and check the entire system, this means every radiator gets hot. It will be worth the money for his time.
