People who use boilers for their main source of heat report that they love the kind of heat that a boiler provides, whether they have a steam boiler or hot boiler. If you were thinking that there really is only one type of heat, you may want to reconsider. All you have to do is add adjectives to the beginning of the word heat. There is dry heat, wet heat, drafty heat, even heat, and uneven heat just to mention a few. The heat provided by a boiler will give you even, draft-less heat. That is opposed to drafty, uneven heat many forced air systems provide. There are many different combinations and configurations for boilers. There are gas boilers and oil boilers and a combination of the two with dual fuel burners. A boiler is simply a pressure vessel where water is heated for the purpose of providing heat somewhere for something. There are high pressure boilers and low pressure boilers. There are steam boilers and hot water boilers. The focus of the boiler page is not on high pressure boilers or the type of fuel used to heat the water, but on the mechanics of how the loops work and hot water and steam controls on low pressure boilers. Many of the same controls found on gas boilers and oil boilers are the same controls used on furnaces and water heaters. Refer to the furnace page for more info. on gas controls. Oil controls will be introduced later. Boilers can either be hot water or steam (either of those can be gas boilers or oil boilers) and the piping systems are different for each type. The hot water system boiler uses a pump to circulate the hot water while the steam boiler uses its own pressure to circulate the steam throughout the system. They also have some similar and some different controls to run the boiler. Whatever system you may have I will offer maintenance tips for each type of boiler system. Welcome to hot water boilers and steam boiler consumer information.

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