Home / Old Iron Files
The Old Iron Files
Twenty-five years on the job and you start to collect them — the strange, beautiful, over-built mechanical systems hiding in old buildings. Century-old plenums. Antique boilers. Original ductwork still doing real work. This is where I document the old iron, honestly: what it is, how it worked, and why it still stops a guy in his tracks who does this for a living.
From the basement up
The 30-ton rooftop nobody could read
A 1933 East Baltimore church called about the heat and air. Up top: a 30-ton gas/electric package unit so old and painted-over the data plate was gone. How you spec a unit when the nameplate's been lost.
Hidden split system · Part 2The hidden split system in the basement
I went for the roof. Downstairs was a whole second system the roof had nothing to do with — a 180,000 BTU York air handler still on R-22, old furnace venting, and caged condensers out back.
Plenum heating · 1917The 1917 mansion built for one of the richest men in America
A whole basement turned into one giant supply plenum — radiators hung in the ductwork, blowers pushing heat up through the floors. And they still run the original 1917 ducts to feed the modern system today.
Riverfront fish house · 1880The 1880 fish house that became a museum — and the HVAC job nobody wants
An 1880 H.L. Harvey fish house on the head of the Chesapeake, packed with sinkboxes, punt guns and a thousand decoys. Then the real problem: how do you climate-control an uninsulated riverfront building, on a volunteer budget, without wrecking the collection?
Stone mission church · R-22Same stone as Fort McHenry — and the 1990 unit still running
A little stone Catholic mission church pinned between the Susquehanna and a granite cliff in Port Deposit, built from the same rock as Fort McHenry. Two separate systems: a newer Williamson furnace and hand-scrawled panel down in the stone basement, and a 36-year-old R-22 condenser — air handler up in the attic above the sanctuary — that absolutely refuses to die.
The next old system
I'm always hunting the next one — an antique boiler room, original ductwork, some mechanical mystery hiding in a basement. When I find it, it lands here.
Got an old system in your building?
I'm always hunting the next one for the Files. If you've got a wild old boiler room, original ductwork, or some mechanical mystery in your basement, the Old Iron Files keeps growing. Subscribe and you'll get the next find from the field.