I grew up with a boiler system in our home.
The boiler was the largest piece of crap though.
It is so large that it took up the entire basement. It was rusted, dirty and hardly worked. Also, in order to get the heating in the family room above the basement, holes were split in the floor. That’s right, our basement floor had holes with metal grates over the top. There were about several metal grates spread out in the family room, then you had to be careful not to step on the middle of the grate since it got hot, on the sides of the grates, it was only tepid. My siblings and I each would pick a grate to sit on the side of in order to think the heating. It was a horrible heating system and all of us were always cold. My mother even had to put a space heating system on the kitchen table so all of us could have warmth before school. Overtime too, our mother hated the grates so much she reduced it to just 1. Only using 1 large grate and hoping the boiler’s heat rises up was not that good. The heating system was not even powerful to begin with. That was our life for a truly long time though. It was not until I was in high school that our family finally had enough money to update the boiler system with a gas fireplace. The last grate was covered up and the gas heating was all all of us used. It still was not truly powerful, however it was better than the boiler.