When we started our heating work in Seattle, it was as Capitol Hill Plumbing & Heating. We were busy installing boilers that used coal as a fuel. Our classic old houses had little doors leading to chutes in the basements for fuel storage.
Our boilers were primative, but if you kept it stoked, it heated the house. The boilers were sized by rules of thumb, and the pipes were huge and sloped, so that the heated water would rise gently by the force of gravity to all of the radiators.
Over the years there have been a lot of innovations. The coal storage in basements disappeared and the old coal burners were converted to oil, then natural gas. Circulation pumps were often added, and often a whole new heating appliance installed.
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Over the years we have also seen some of the old hot air furnaces. We generally think of forced air as being the cheap way to install heat. It was not as popular as boilers and radiators , I think because of comfort issues. The original systems were called octopuses, and the furnace and gravity ducting were really, really large.
Now, a hundred years later, the most popular systems we install are high efficiency "condensing" boilers and either radiant heat from tube in floors or modern european designed and very stylish radiators flat panel radiators.
The future is tickling us now, also. Our customers are looking at energy and water saving technologies. Solar is back. Manufacturers of pumps are looking at energy saving technologies like smaller pumps and variable speed pumps to lower the cost of circulating water.
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