Our House's Heart Transplant
The New York Times
November 20, 2005
THOSE of us who live in the Northeast are already painfully aware of how expensive it's going to be to keep warm this winter. With heating-oil prices rising over the past couple of years, people gambled and converted to gas; now, with natural-gas prices expected to surge, it all seems to be about the same. Perhaps the only difference is the efficiency of the heating system itself -- and, in older homes, the boiler.
That boiler is more than a piece of machinery. It is the heart of the house, pumping hot water or steam through pipes like blood through arteries. And every winter, the boiler in our house lets us know how hard it is working as it fires up with a belching rumble. Every winter, that is, until this one.
When my wife and I bought our late-1800's row house in downtown here five years ago, one of the most striking features (besides the quaint 1940's black-and-white kitchen) was the cast-iron behemoth of a boiler in the utility room off the kitchen. The boiler was about a century old, and it had been converted from coal to oil. It was fire-engine red and stood five feet tall. When we opened the heavy belly-level door, infernolike flames burst within.
''This is probably on its last legs,'' I said to our home inspector.
''Nah, you kidding?'' he said. ''This boiler is probably more efficient than any of these flimsy new ones. It holds its heat. This thing ain't going nowhere.''
And sure enough, after we moved in, we found that other new homeowners in Jersey City had also kept their old boilers. Raymond Mingst and Arthur Bruso, artists who live down the street from us, have painted their cast-iron steam boiler dark green, and highlighted in gold the lettering ''No. 1 Ideal Redflash Boiler, American Radiator Company.''
Their boiler had bypassed the oil phase, and had been converted directly to gas.
''When we first bought the house,'' Mr. Mingst said, ''I opened the boiler door and, like Mary Poppins, actually cleaned out chunks of old coal.''
I realized that our boilers knew more about our houses than we did. They are as much a part of the house as the bricks. They have not only outlived generations of tenants, but they have also adjusted to their heating needs -- whether a family liked it cooler or warmer. I pictured what a big step the original installation of our boiler would have been, and how the family in the house at the time would have marveled at the then-modern concept of central heat, and rejoiced at no longer having to rely on the fireplaces in each room to heat the house.
Mr. Mingst and Mr. Bruso have given their boiler pride of place in their Victorian kitchen. They even gave it a strong, solid name: Molly.
But each boiler has its quirks. Just as ours made its presence known by its thunderous ignition, theirs requires weekly water adjustments.
''We have to make sure to drain about two buckets of rusty water every week, so it doesn't overheat,'' Mr. Bruso said. ''The boiler works on gravity. It's very well balanced.''
My wife and I always had our oil delivered through an alley behind our house. Sometimes our oil company would refuse delivery whenever it had snowed too much (which would inevitably be when we were down to our last few drops of oil). And when a new building went up at the corner of the alley, they argued that the alley was now too narrow to get through. (I felt that they simply didn't want to maneuver their truck.) So, for all of last winter, the only way we could have oil delivered was through our house, with the truck parked on the street out front and the hose snaking in our front door and through our living room, dining room and kitchen.
To make matters worse, our pipes and radiators began banging more than usual. But we endured the noise, until it became so loud that we knew something must be wrong. Our plumber told us that the water pump was going. The problem wasn't the boiler itself; the water pump was no longer made.
Sadly, we accepted his recommendation to buy a new boiler and switch to gas.
It took a day for two men to wrestle out the cast-iron boiler. They took it apart in four pieces, with the two of them carrying out each piece one by one. At the end of the day there was a gaping empty hole where the boiler had stood. Our friends marveled at how much more space we had in the utility room.
The next day, the plumbers brought in a top-of-the-line Weil-McLain. It was tiny in comparison, and immediately brought the house into the 21st century. But it seemed cold and somewhat flimsy-looking compared with the big red boiler.
The plumbers fired it up. Silence, and then a hiss.
''There it goes,'' our plumber said. ''Look how fast that water's heating.''
And sure enough, the water coursed through the pipes in seconds, faster than our old water pump could ever have managed. I was kind of sad that technology hadn't been able to keep up with the boiler.
Perhaps our new gas boiler represents an important next step in the modernization of our house. I can't say that I miss the noise of the old boiler, and I'm pretty confident that it wasn't as efficient as we would have liked to believe. I appreciate the extra space its absence has created. But every time I walk into the utility room, I feel the new boiler still needs to prove itself. We'll see, this winter.