Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Advise Needed Heating System

I have 2 options

my situation I live in a house with very noisy baseboards. It is a banging noise and not a water sound. Also a constant ticking. I have paid to have it looked at, bled, put rubber insulation in some of the baseboards but it has not helped. I have been told the ticking isis just normal.
It is very loud and I cannot deal with it another winter b/c I sleep mal and there is no way to fix it as the noise is coming from inside the walls very poorly and do not function well with it. It makes me feel very anxious and I sleep usually with no heat.

I would like to, against the advise of a 1 contractor, put a furnace in the attic to heat only the 2nd floor. We would leave the baseboards in. The house already has central air conditioning. The furnace would go in the attic and new vents would be put in on the second floor only. I have lived with hot air heat before and had no problem. IN addition, a humidifiier would be installed in closet of first floor. The cost would be b/w 6-8K and I am not really so concerned about the cost as I am the ability to sleep well and be comfortable all year. Can you comment on this?? MY attic in this house is unfinished. I am tired of paying people to try to fix the system only to be told well the noise is normal and we can put rubber insulation on but there is no guarentee it will reduce the noise by a significant level as we cannot see where it is coming from.

We are also at the same time looking at another house to purchase possibly. In additon to the 6-8K I would be putting in the house mentioned above, there is another 30-40K of work in other areas so we are thinking perhaps it would be easier to find a house without the need to do all the work. This second potential house has steam heat (oil). I know it is also potentially noisy so I am wondering if we could convert the potentila new house to central air. This house is oil and has standing upright radiators. If I moved into the house and decided I want to convert the whole house to hot air is this possible given the fact that the house already has central a/c and the house has a finished attic with a bathroom??

Have you gotten a 2nd opinion on the problems or is this just 1 contractor telling you this? I find it hard to believe they can't figure out the noise. Other than that yes you could put forced air in the attic but then when you remove all the radiators from the 2nd floor your boiler will be oversized for the rest of the house causing it to short cycle. If the house already has central air have you looked into getting a new airhandler with heat.

If you have AC in the home now why cant you just add heat , gas oil, elec. to that duct work now????? Like Matt said get 3 bids here ;) ED

I spoke to someone but he is not sure. I posted yesterday under nikokai. I kept having password problems so I am typing this under the name nikokai1.

I was looking to put a furnace to heat the 2nd floor.

He suggested to have a/c system looked at to convert it to
heating and cooling? It would require having the indoor portion of the system (the air handler) taken out and a warm air furnace put in its place. He said this would be in the $3,000 to $4,000 range. However, my concern is that the current central A/C is one zone. Therefore, if the warm air furnace is attached to the a/c would the warm air furnace be sending heat not only to the 2nd floor but also to the 1st floor. Would this be an inefficient way of heating the 1st floor. In addition, I do need to run the boiler as well which is currently in the basement and divided into 3 zones (2 downstairs and 1 for 2nd floor). Could I just close the vents on the ceilings of the downstairs (1st floor) when the furnace is on. However, would this not trap the heat b/w the floors.

Another option would be to install a furnace on the 2nd floor and to add additional duct work on the second floor so the furnace is independent of the a/c. The furnace would then only heat the 2nd floor I think. In this option, a humidifier would be added as well. This job would cost close to $6-7K.

The money does not concern me as much as doing the job once and doing it right. I would rather pay to have it be comfortable and not need to be redone

Did your other contractor explain what the banging was? If not, how can you be sure HE knows exactly what it is. It would be advantageous for us to know what temperature the water is that your heating system is using. I saw a previous post where you were asking about steam. If you have baseboards, you probably don't have steam heat. Where are you located? Can you find another contractor to give you an asessment?

I would suggest looking into replacement of the baseboards with a different type of hydronic radiator? There are dozens of types that don't have the metal "fins" which cause all the noise. A fresh install done properly would also eliminate stressed piping that might be causing noise as well. You might just try one room and see if it solves the problem. Search for "hydronic radiator" on the web. This would be much less expensive and much more efficient.

Another set of ductwork doesn't seem like a good solution, but there are also hydronic air handlers that can be connected to the hot water system to circulate the heat via ductwork, which might be better than adding a separately fueled furnace.

Wish we could trade. I'd love to have hot water heat instead of the forced air system in my house. My head's always hot and my feet are always cold... :D

Good luck!

Doug M

here is a what someone else told me - I agree with the contractor who said it there is no way to guartantee the noise will all go away as the pipes in the wall are the cause of most of the noise. No matter what tricks we try such as lowering the
boiler water temperature to avoid the expansion and contraction noises-you will have these issues with pipes in the walls. By the way it is not normal. A top quality installation does not have these noises because the hangers and attachments points on the pipes can be done in such a way that they move
freely without expansion noises. Also we install reset controls that gently ramp up the temperature of water in pipes to avoid that jarring expansion noise you hear now.

- My feeling is the installation was not done properly in the first place. I have had atleast 9 contractors look and study it and no one could reduce the noise at all. if you think I am writing all this after 1 contractor that would be crazy on my part.


I am installing the furnace but I would like your advice on the 2 options listed below.

He suggested to have a/c system looked at to convert it to
heating and cooling? It would require having the indoor portion of the system (the air handler) taken out and a warm air furnace put in its place. He said this would be in the $3,000 to $4,000 range. However, my concern is that the current central A/C is one zone. Therefore, if the warm air furnace is attached to the a/c would the warm air furnace be sending heat not only to the 2nd floor but also to the 1st floor. Would this be an inefficient way of heating the 1st floor. In addition, I do need to run the boiler as well which is currently in the basement and divided into 3 zones (2 downstairs and 1 for 2nd floor). Could I just close the vents on the ceilings of the downstairs (1st floor) when the furnace is on. However, would this not trap the heat b/w the floors.

Another option would be to install a furnace on the 2nd floor and to add additional duct work on the second floor so the furnace is independent of the a/c. The furnace would then only heat the 2nd floor I think. In this option, a humidifier would be added as well. This job would cost close to $6-7K.

Which of these 2 options is better??