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"I think I need a new boiler"
Column #870 10/29/11
On The Level
By
Jim Rooney
Q. We have a very big old boiler. I was told it could be from the 1940's or 50's. It also used to have a hot water boiler in it, I suspect. I see the lines for it but they have been cut. My question is do you know how this thing operates? It seems to heat water whenever it wants to and when the thermostat calls for heat it sends hot water to the radiators up in the house. Even if it’s not being called by the thermostat for hot water, it still seems to heat up. My guess is it’s holding water hot just in case I need it. Is that true? This thing likes fuel-- a lot. The size is about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and almost 5 feet tall. I usually shut if off during the day at the emergency switch near the basement steps. The house still stays pretty warm.
A. Your boiler is truly an antique. It might be the age of the house so you could look up when the house was built to get a feel for its age. As a teenager I briefly had a 1954 DeSoto automobile. It ran like a top. It got six to eight miles to the gallon. I couldn’t afford that beast even when gas was 32.9 cents a gallon. Your boiler is in that category. Sure, your boiler works and will heat nicely but you’d need to buy an oil well to feed it.
I think that the domestic hot water coil that once provided the home’s boundless hot water, known as a “Summer/Winter hook-up”, was terminated as you can see and a stand alone electric water heater was added to the house so the boiler could be completely shut down in summer. However, boilers likes to maintain a core temperature between 160ºF to 180ºF all the time. That’s why you hear it cycling on, pumping oil into the burn chamber and hot exhaust up that eight inch flue pipe to the atmosphere, even when the thermostat is not calling for heat. Another reason your ancient boiler likes to stay in one warm temperature range is repetitious cooling and heating of the metals as the boiler would alternately fire and cool would stress the joints and gaskets to eventual leakage.
I realize that replacing the boiler might be a stretch for an out of pocket purchase for you now but it’s a case of you almost can’t afford not to replace this boiler-- it will eat you out of house and home as you are learning. You might be able to squeeze a little bit of efficiency out of this beast by having a truly gifted old-time boiler technician tweak the controls and add baffles to the burn chamber but it would be like putting new tires and a two-barrel carburetor onto my old DeSoto to see if I could get a mile per gallon more out of her. She just wasn’t built for it. Finding parts for boilers built before 1990 is getting harder and harder to do. Sometimes you can find odd old parts on the web but it’s truly a search.
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show details Oct 26
Column #870
10/29/11 On The Level
By
Jim Rooney"I think I need a new boiler"
Q. We have a very big old boiler. I was told it could be from the 1940's or 50's. It also used to have a hot water boiler in it, I suspect. I see the lines for it but they have been cut. My question is do you know how this thing operates? It seems to heat water whenever it wants to and when the thermostat calls for heat it sends hot water to the radiators up in the house. Even if it’s not being called by the thermostat for hot water, it still seems to heat up. My guess is it’s holding water hot just in case I need it. Is that true? This thing likes fuel-- a lot. The size is about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and almost 5 feet tall. I usually shut if off during the day at the emergency switch near the basement steps. The house still stays pretty warm.
A. Your boiler is truly an antique. It might be the age of the house so you could look up when the house was built to get a feel for its age. As a teenager I briefly had a 1954 DeSoto automobile. It ran like a top. It got six to eight miles to the gallon. I couldn’t afford that beast even when gas was 32.9 cents a gallon. Your boiler is in that category. Sure, your boiler works and will heat nicely but you’d need to buy an oil well to feed it.
I think that the domestic hot water coil that once provided the home’s boundless hot water, known as a “Summer/Winter hook-up”, was terminated as you can see and a stand alone electric water heater was added to the house so the boiler could be completely shut down in summer. However, boilers likes to maintain a core temperature between 160ºF to 180ºF all the time. That’s why you hear it cycling on, pumping oil into the burn chamber and hot exhaust up that eight inch flue pipe to the atmosphere, even when the thermostat is not calling for heat. Another reason your ancient boiler likes to stay in one warm temperature range is repetitious cooling and heating of the metals as the boiler would alternately fire and cool would stress the joints and gaskets to eventual leakage.
I realize that replacing the boiler might be a stretch for an out of pocket purchase for you now but it’s a case of you almost can’t afford not to replace this boiler-- it will eat you out of house and home as you are learning. You might be able to squeeze a little bit of efficiency out of this beast by having a truly gifted old-time boiler technician tweak the controls and add baffles to the burn chamber but it would be like putting new tires and a two-barrel carburetor onto my old DeSoto to see if I could get a mile per gallon more out of her. She just wasn’t built for it. Finding parts for boilers built before 1990 is getting harder and harder to do. Sometimes you can find odd old parts on the web but it’s truly a search.
Boilers generally last between 40 to 60 years. A lot of boiler technological advances have been made over the last 60 years. Yours is ready for replacement based on age and technology if nothing else. A replacement boiler with the same heating output would take up half the space the old one does and would use considerably less fuel. Cost of operation savings will pay for it over a period I’d guess in about six to ten years. I can’t predict fuel prices just levels of consumption.
The way that behemoth was brought into your house when it was new was in pieces and was basically asssembled on site. And that’s how it’s going to leave you-- in pieces. It’s old enough that it will probably not come apart easily so demolition willl involve sledgehammers and lots of dust. And it almost surely has asbestos inside of it as insulation so it has to be removed by professionals.
If this boiler is in a house that is the age of the boiler then you need to do an extensive inventory of heat loss areas that may have been built into this structure. If the house was built in the 40’s, it may have no sidewall insulation or attic insulation whatsoever. Attic insulation will be easier to install than sidewall insulation if you have none. There was a booming business in the 1950s of pumping loose insulation into sidewalls of homes that didn’t have any and covering the access holes by residing the house in aluminum or asbestos/cement shingles. Doing that today would involve a more modern siding material but the installation method is still the same.
Check windows and doors. How leaky are they? Check door bottoms and thresholds as well as jamb sides for air leakage and weatherstrip as needed. Every little bit counts and every tiny bit of air leakage you can stop makes the house feel warmer and you’ll burn less oil.
Keep the mail coming. If you've got a question, tip, or comment let me know. Write "On The Level," c/o The Capital, P.O. Box 3407, Annapolis, MD 21403 or e-mail me at jimrooney@jimrooneyonthelevel.com or inspektor@aol.com.