When to replace heating pipes

Hi Tom

There is absolutely no reason for that.
You probably saw water pipes made of galvanized steel tubing.

Heating pipes made of steel usually only suffer damage at poor weld seams
(but it doesn't take 30 years) at leaking threaded connections or due to moisture exposure from outside.

Olli

I would like to restart this discussion. Our house was built in 1962 and the heating pipes are made of steel. The electrical system needs to be redone, so the walls will have to be opened up anyway.

We assumed that the heating pipes (like the drinking water pipes) need to be replaced.

We had 3 heating companies come to the site to provide a quote, and 2 said that the heating pipes do not necessarily have to be replaced. The third was not so sure.

The reasoning was that heating pipes actually work as a closed circuit and are therefore not as sensitive as drinking water pipes...

On the one hand, we do not want to incur unnecessary costs, on the other hand the pipes are at least 55 years old and we do not want to have to open the walls again in the next 20 years...

QUESTION: Is there a reliable method to check the condition of these pipes (not just in one spot)? Is it actually conceivable that steel pipes last 75 to 80 years?