Baltimore winters can keep your home feeling blistering cold when you don’t have a great heating system in place. One heating system that often gets overlooked is a boiler. Boilers can be an excellent way to keep your home cozy this coming winter. Read below to learn more about what a boiler is, and how it works to heat your house.
What is a Boiler?
Think about how your kitchen feels when you’re cooking spaghetti. The boiling water on the stove releases heat, and this steam heat then makes the surrounding air feel hotter in the room. This concept is similar to how a boiler works. A boiler works to transfer heat to water, and use the resulting steam or hot substance to heat the home. While this view is simplistic, it helps to illustrate how this technology works. There are several types of boilers. Gas, oil, and electric boilers all use this basic concept in different ways.
How is a Boiler Different?
The critical difference between a boiler and a furnace is the way that they work. They both send heat into your home, but in a different method. A furnace will heat air that is forced into the house through ducts and vents. This heated air is then forced into the room it’s heating up.
A boiler works differently in that it warms up water or another other substance, and then sends the steam or hot material through pipes in the home. These pipes will radiate the heat outward into the room. The heated material will either be sent into radiators in the house or into a radiant floor system. So, one way to look at this is that it’s a closed system whereas the furnace is more open with the heated air traveling through the heater and out into the atmosphere.
How Does It Work?
The primary process of how your boiler works starts with the thermostat. The thermostat will sense that the temperature has dropped and that the boiler needs to turn on. The boiler will turn on, and use the heat from the fuel source for heating up the water that is located inside.
The water or steam is then sent into the pipe system going through your radiators or radiant floor system. This process radiates heat into the room that warms the air. The material in the pipe will cool down, and return to the boiler. Inside the boiler, it’ll be reheated and recirculated into the home to continue this cycle.
Once your home has reached the correct temperature, the boiler will be told by the thermostat to turn off until it’s needed again. The boiler will turn on and off as needed by the temperature you’ve set on the thermostat.
Boiler Systems Fuel Options
There are a few different options when it comes to the fuel for a boiler. This fuel is used to create the heat that warms up the fluid or substance inside the system. They include electricity, oil, and gas.
Boiler Repair and Maintenance
If your home already has a boiler installed, it’s a good idea to keep it maintained. Boilers can break down from pumps failing, or electrical components wear out. In some situations, low water pressure can happen, or air can get into the system. All of these situations can be better handled when regular repairs and maintenance are done on your system.
However, if you’re looking to make your boiler more energy efficient, an old boiler cannot be retrofitted to be more efficient. The good news is that a new boiler can be more energy efficient, especially if you have a system that’s 20 years old or more. Depending on your current set-up, it may not be overly complicated to replace your old system. An experienced technician will be able to evaluate your existing network from the boiler to the distribution system to determine the best way to replace it.
At Griffith Energy Services, we believe that our customers deserve the best systems that will help keep their homes comfortable. Want to learn more about having a boiler installed or require repair or maintenance to your existing boiler? Contact us at (888) 474-3391 today to speak with one of our professional staff to get the answers to your questions on a boiler system for your Baltimore residence.
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