THE BASEMENT RULE: we enter boiler rooms the way we would like people to enter our workshop — and we leave them swept, labelled and photographed. Your grandchildren will find our tags on the pipes.
What we do
What the works does
Boilers sized to the radiation
A replacement boiler is quoted against a room-by-room survey of the cast iron you own — each radiator’s output counted, not guessed from its paint colour. Nine houses in ten were sold a boiler twice the size their radiators could ever empty, and the short-cycling, the clanging and the fuel bills were all symptoms of that one mistake.
Balancing, not bypassing
The near-boiler piping is where old systems go wrong: fat pipes cut down to nothing by a speed-fit retrofit, air trapped at the high point, the furthest radiator left to starve. We re-pipe the header, balance the loops and bleed the system properly — most “dead zone” complaints in an Adder Flats Victorian are a piping story, not an equipment one.
Glycol, aquastats & the unattended house
For the Osmund Hill houses that sit empty through February: glycol mixed to the real design temperature, low-temp cutoffs wired properly, and a dial-a-temperature aquastat strategy that lets the house sleep at 55°F without the basement dipping toward the danger line. We install it, label it, and leave the mixing chart taped inside the jacket.
Iron inventory
The works, by the ton
How it goes
One retrofit, from survey to first cold snap
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day one
The radiation survey
Every radiator measured, its output estimated from height, tube count and fin depth, and the total against the boiler that has been feeding it. The sheet is yours whoever does the work.
Day two
The piping diagnosis
Near-boiler piping drawn as it is and as it should be. This is the visit where most jobs find their real problem — and where a third of them discover the boiler itself was never the issue.
The proposal
Two paths, both printed
Re-pipe and keep, or re-pipe and replace — each with its whole price, its projected fuel figure and the number of seasons it buys. We leave both on the kitchen table and take no deposit.
The fitting
Two days, one crew
The header re-built in threaded iron, the loops balanced, the new boiler set and wired by the same two people who surveyed the house. Water treated, system flushed, air chased to the vent.
First fire
The quiet commissioning
Water temperatures set to the radiation, not to a sticker: the boiler cycles long and slow, the radiators warm edge-to-edge, and the fuel figure we promised becomes the number on your next bill.
Every autumn
The tag check
An hour a year: vents, aquastat, glycol strength tested with a refractometer, the tags on the pipes re-read. The system keeps its biography in the basement, in our handwriting.
The works album
Ironwork from the foundry town
Rates
The works rates, nailed up
The same card hangs inside the boiler-room door of every house we serve. Every figure is the whole figure — iron, fittings, flush, disposal of the old unit and the permit.
Winter rate card — current issue
Radiation survey & heat loss$165
Room-by-room count of what your iron can emit — yours to keep
Near-boiler re-pipe & balancefrom $2,400
Header re-built, loops balanced, system flushed and treated
Cast iron boiler replacementfrom $7,900
Sized to the radiation; old unit drained and hauled
Glycol package, unattended housefrom $890
Mix to design temperature, cutoffs, chart inside the jacket
Radiator vent & trap service$38
Per unit, incl. the ones that hiss in November
Autumn tag check$118
One hour: vents, aquastat, refractometer, tags
Two companies told us the radiators had to go. Sixth Street counted them instead — forty-one emitters, most of them bigger than the survey expected — and the new boiler is half the size the others quoted. The house is quieter than it has been in thirty years and the gas bill fell by a third.
Our back bedrooms had been “dead zones” since the eighties. It was four feet of pipe near the boiler, cut down by a previous retrofit — you could see it once they pointed. Two days of threading iron and the far rooms came back. Nobody had ever looked at the piping before.
We winter in the south and the house sleeps alone up here. Their glycol package, the cutoffs and the autumn visit mean I stop imagining the phone call in February. The mixing chart taped inside the jacket is the most reassuring document I own.
Asked in the boiler room
Should old radiators really stay?
If they hold water and hold pressure, yes — cast iron outlives generations of boilers, and its gentle high-mass heat is what modern equipment is asked to imitate. We survey before we advise: cracked sections and unfixable leaks are the only radiators we ever retire, and we say which ones those are in writing.
What was wrong with just replacing the boiler?
Usually the boiler was fine and the piping around it had been mutilated by successive quick retrofits. A new boiler on bad near-boiler piping repeats the old problems at new-equipment prices. Our survey prices the piping first, and a third of houses leave with their existing boiler kept and re-piped.
Do you also do forced air and heat pumps?
Yes, as the second half of the trade: air handlers, hydro coils and cold-climate heat pumps for the corridor’s additions — always sized by a Manual J, and always as a companion to the radiators rather than a replacement for them. The two systems share one thermostat strategy and one set of tags.
What does the autumn tag check include?
An hour: every vent and trap exercised, the aquastat verified, glycol strength read with a refractometer, pressures noted on the tag inside the boiler jacket. It is the cheapest visit we sell and the reason our emergency calls skew toward houses that are not ours.
How far does the works travel?
Corbettsville, Adder Flats and Osmund Hill are home. Past the notch we take retrofit work by the project and service clients by season — ring the works and ask; the answer is honest either way.
The fuel figure, printed
Every proposal carries a projected fuel figure beside its price. If the first full winter misses it by more than ten percent, the difference is our problem — we return, re-balance and re-print until the house agrees with the arithmetic.
Sixth Street Boiler Works · 6 Foundry Lane, Corbettsville · steam@sixthstreetboiler.example