Boilers For Heating Water

Boilers are used in many applications including: apartment buildings, office buildings, rigs, hospitals, malls, and houses.  In most larger buildings you will find that the heating method is with boilers.  The system can still be forced air like you might see in a house, but the hot water flows through a system of pipes and fins.  The hot water flows through the pipe and the air blows past the heated fin to then heat the room or office.  This is a good system to provide control in each zone very easily.  In the case of apartment buildings the boilers heat the water then the water flows to a baseboard that has fins.  Then through convection the air is heated which in turn heats the room.  In condos you may have a similar situation that uses radiant heat to heat the rooms instead of convection.  In most of these examples the buildings would use large cast iron boilers, or condensing boilers.  In either case these boilers are generally about 80% efficient.  Now there is higher efficient boilers that will do the job.  Often these higher efficient boilers are the ones you would see in a home.  To use these in a larger application I have seen 3 to 10 of these boilers hooked in series to provide the required heat and save money with this boiler.