Heat, Update 1

I tend to write in fits, so you can expect times of plenty and times of drought when it comes to my blogging. Right now things are evolving on the heating front so I figure it's worth a quick update.

The ceilings are out and I'm ready to pull the trigger on buying the heating package (I'm currently leaning towards the ingeniously named Radiant Floor Company), which has brought on a near-panic attack. The notion of actually going through with this stupid idea and spending thousands of dollars has apparently knocked some sense into me. Not too much sense, mind you, but just enough to get me to evaluate my longterm plan.

At this point I'm going to leave the existing system in place, which means the old boiler, death trap that it is, has another year of life in it. The radiators will stay, of course, and the new system will have to be installed around it. The benefit of doing this is too much to ignore, as this allows me to focus on installing the new system (not figuring out how to remove the old) and it means we can face next winter with no fear. I'm convinced that a radiant package will work just fine, I'm just not convinced I'm going to get it exactly right the first time. There may be opportunities for refinement over the next year, and I don't want to be 'refining' with mittens on in my own house.

Gotta go, Des is distracting me with her chip eating technique: grab fistful of corn chips, dump into mouth, chew as loudly as possible while leering at my discomfort. Oh, where did the romance go? Maybe out with the ceilings.

Our Heating Situation

For some strange reason that we'll never figure out, our house has only two radiators on the entire first floor. One of them is at the base of the stairs. The other is really short radiator underneath a window. Along with that issue, there is the boiler. Lucky for us our boiler is vintage 1935 and converted from coal some time in the 70's. For so many reasons, that thing has to go.

Paul, being the insatiably curious person that he is, did hours of research to discover that we don't actually have to just replace the boiler. In order to solve the uneven heat sources as well as the horrible inefficiency, we could put in radiant floor heat!

The only big issue - that entails removing the ceilings in the basement and the coved ceilings on the first floor. After many hours of deliberation, even up to the very morning of, we decided to proceed with the demolition, as you can see.