Re: zoned or not zoned?? thermostatic control of multiple spaces

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 14:13:01 -0500, "E. Lee Dickinson"
<lee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message <el9p9m$40u$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Anyone who lives with someone else knows that different people have vastly
>different temperature prefernces, and a few degrees either way can be
>intolerably uncomfortable for some people. So this is a big deal, to me.

What is "intolerable" depends on the circumstances ...

As a perennially broke grad student with wife and kids, I was caretaker of a
century-old, uninsulated, brick apartment building in Minnesota (three-story,
three entrances/addresses, 19 units) that was heated by a *single* steam
boiler using a single-pipe system with no useable valves.

It had _no_ thermostat. Control was via a manually adjusted timer with which I
could turn the boiler ON or OFF for any given 15-minute interval during 24
hours. So most nights after the weather report, I'd trundle down to the boiler
room to set each of the 96 little levers on the rotary dial of the timer,
turning more on if I guessed it would get colder and fewer if it was predicted
to get warmer -- typically with more set to ON during night and early morning
than afternoon.

'Course this was itself a fabulous improvement over the original when the
control consisted in shoveling and banking more or less coal ...

There was no way that all the tenants could be "satisfied". But nobody froze.

The owner lived in a basement apartment next to the boiler -- He was always
too hot (unless he was in jail ...) and I lived on the very far end of the
building -- six units and three entrances away -- and the building temperature
was 'best' if I was cold. Cycling the heat quickly so that the owner didn't
get too hot meant that the far end never received any heat at all because the
steam never arrived although the pipes clanked and the air vented from the
radiators.

We've gotten spoiled ;-) ... (and yes, it *was* much colder then, even in
Minnesota.

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org