Oh No! I Don't Wanna Go Down There! -------Part Two: Inna Basement

Tours are usually planned out to end right by the gift shop, but we're not doing merchandise (yet), so we left you all by the basement stairs, promising to get back together soon. The condo dwellers had found their condensers out back, located their air handlers, ferreted out and replaced their air filters, and been discouraged from getting involved too deeply beyond that. Most of these links, in case you're skeptical or shy about following them, go to sites or Google searches that will make you smarter. Beware; too much of this specialized information could cost you about $75,000 in tools, equipment and truck, not to mention starting a whole new life (If you feel yourself falling in love, contact me and I'll talk you down).

You electric heat and heat pump people can come if you like, but I want to assure you that basements are overrated as meeting places. Flashlights ready? Taking notes? Watch your step; many thanks to Etta James and Sugar Pie deSanto for mood music.
Our motivated fellow pilgrims are those who found: radiators or grilles upstairs, possibly air handlers, but no heat pump or electric heat. If you found your system upstairs, you're still welcome to come along. If you live in a mobile home or slab house with gas or oil heat, leave a comment and I'll talk to you one-on-one. Ok. All here? We're looking around for a chimney. Could be at the center of the house, could be on either gable end. If you need to go outside and look, we'll wait. That chimney will be penetrated by a flue pipe, a round metal duct of 4 to 8 inch diameter coming out of the chimney and leading to....... gotcha. That thing the flue pipe goes to is your heat source. If you have no chimney, or your heat source is obviously not connected to it, it's probably "direct vented" or "power vented," sending combustion gases outdoors through the basement wall. You'll hear the vent blower turn on first when the equipment starts up. It's like a chimney but cheaper for the installer and builder.

This machine we're looking at, now, is it a large sheet metal box with square and round ducts leading from it across the basement? Say "furnace." Heats air. Furnace. If it's smaller than a televangelist's doghouse and has pipes of any size coming up and out across the basement ceiling, say "boiler." Heats water, in some fashion. Boiler. Among boilers, there are hydronic boilers, which heat water and send it out through piping loops which include the radiators in your living space and possibly some concealed piping in walls and floors, driven by circulating pumps, which push water around the loop endlessly, through the boiler to get hot, out to the radiators to release heat to the house, and back again. And there are "steam boilers," which send steam out through rather large pipes at alarming velocities (the speed with which steam travels through pipes accounts for all that banging and clanging, known as "steam hammer").

How to tell hydronic from steam? Look at the front of the boiler. At the bottom of the whole affair is a burner of some kind; we'll come back to that. Up above that are some control components with adjustable settings. Don't remove any covers, just read labels. Do the controls feature the words "low water cutoff," and "high pressure limit?" Is there a transparent column of water designed to indicate the level of water in the boiler, probably stained with minerals? Say "sight glass." This link provides good illustrations of the front of a home steam boiler, featuring the pressure limit control, sight glass and low water cutoff, a safety device also found on hydronic boilers these days. If your piping network consists mostly of pipes two inches in diameter or more, that's another indicator of steam as a means of heat distribution. If you're satisfied you've got a steam system, what's a concerned homeowner to do? Have the boiler and burner serviced once a year by a professional, maintain proper water level in the sight glass (this can vary from halfway up the glass to an inch from the highest visible point, depending upon many things. Any setting in between will probably be ok) if the water is manually fed into the system (if you periodically hear a clunk and a hiss from the boiler, and you haven't added water all winter, you've probably got an "auto-feed" water solenoid, a black component in the water piping above the boiler with a cable attaching it to the low water cutoff).

Time for a tough question: hmmm... how to put this. What's covering your steam pipes? Do they look nice and clean and white with the covering stapled in place and no bare spots showing? Do they have no covering at all? Or do they have a grainy, whitish, old looking covering, possibly hanging loosely in places, or even falling off? I can't provide you with a litmus test for the presence of asbestos in your basement, but conscience demands that I warn you of the hazards.
If you suspect that you have asbestos pipe covering down there, don't panic. Too many homes still do. Just be careful. Don't try to finish a room in the basement. Don't send the kids down there to play. Don't do any unnecessary sweeping, vacuuming, use of compressed air, or anything that might disturb asbestos particles on walls, floors or framing. DON'T EVEN THINK OF PUTTING YOUR EXERCISE BIKE OR TREADMILL DOWN THERE. I MEAN IT! Just try to stay out of the basement except for necessary chores, like adding water to the boiler or retrieving the Christmas decorations when it's that time of year. You are not allowed to remove the asbestos yourself, for practical purposes. Whatever urban myths you may encounter on the Web, don't go down there with a monkey mask and a garbage bag. There's no loophole left in the law that allows a homeowner to successfully remove and dispose of asbestos pipe covering . And I'm not going to link you to asbestos removal contractors in your area. You can go to the Yellow Pages and Better Business Bureau, and caveat emptor. Caveat emptor with chocolate sprinkles. And don't stand there holding your breath. You have to go to the basement sometime, and this tour is important. Just don't wave your arms around or bump into things if you can help it. Enough said.

If your boiler has no sight glass, and if the distribution pipes are mostly one inch or less in diameter, probably uninsulated, and if you have circulator pumps in your piping, your boiler is circulating hot water. There's nothing, usually, to lubricate, except on very old systems, and you can't do much to optimize the efficiency of the system except for covering the pipes. If you have two or three hundred dollars and some time to invest in the project, it pays a decent return. You don't have to be an expert. You can go to the home center and follow the directions on the package, and you'll get a good result. Turn off the heat when you tackle the pipes so you don't get burned.

We'll end with a word to the furnace people. You should also be wary of old systems with possible asbestos covering the duct. But you may find your air filter down here, behind a door in the back of the furnace, so it's worth getting dirty and figuring out how the catch on that door works. Don't tear your fingers up: wear gloves, use tools, but get that door off (turn off the power first, please) and expose your blower (either belt-driven or direct drive, with motor inside the blower body. You may find oil ports on either end of the motor. Hopefully your service person has been attending to those ports yearly. If you're in doubt, get some household oil and put half a dozen drops in each end of the blower motor, if you can reach them. And if you found your filter here, check the size and get a good replacement, pleated, not necessarily exotic and expensive. I pay about six bucks a filter in bulk, you'll get pleated filters at the home center for ten or twelve. And I do charge more than retail for bringing them to your house.

I've skipped over burner issues in this post, for good reasons. You won't be tearing into your oil or gas burner and winding up with a basket of spare parts and no heat with my blessing. Leave the burners to guys like me who dream about them at night. If you do what I've advised, carefully and with common sense, you'll know enough to spot obvious problems, keep your heating system running as well as an amateur can, and be able to speak helpfully to the service people when you call them. Good luck, and send me questions through the comments. I'll do my best to answer.