Advice on new gas boiler...

secutanudu · 06-30-2009, 02:43 PM

I have a 15 year old oil-fired weil mclain boiler. With all the incentives and rebates going on right now, I am planning to switch over to natural gas.

I have gotten some estimates from a few HVAC/Plumbing contractors, and I have seen similar price ranges for different brands of boilers, including:

Weil McLain
Buderis
Munchkin
Baxi
Utica

I want a boiler with the ability to add an indirect fired water heater at some point, though I will not be doing that now. I have a small house (about 1300 square feet) with radiators on the first floor, baseboards on the second floor.

Anyone have any preferences of the brands above, or another brand you would recommend? Thanks!

**beenthere** · 06-30-2009, 05:28 PM

I prefer the Weil McLain Ultra.

Has 5:1 turn down. So an 80,000BTU can be at any firing rate from 16,000BTUs to 80,00BTUs.

yuri · 06-30-2009, 05:55 PM

All my plumbers prefer Weil Mclain so I would go with them. I hear Munchkin is a bit hard to gets parts and info/service for.

secutanudu · 07-01-2009, 07:48 AM

Thanks, I was thinking Weil-McLain too, just because it's the only one I've heard of.

Now to decide if switching from oil to gas is worth the $2,500 in rebates I'll get. I wish I knew how long my boiler was going to last!

yuri · 07-01-2009, 08:06 AM

If your boiler is only 15 yrs old I would imagine you will get at least another 5-10 yrs from it. The oil burner itself may need some repairs and that costs $$. If your oil tank develops a leak then you have a bad problem and another expense. Gas requires very little maintenance, no chimney cleaning and where I live is about half the cost to use than oil. Seems to me to be a more stable way to heat your house as the price of oil varies wildly with whatever whackadoo is running some of those oil producing countries and what comes out of their mouths. There are electric boilers available if electricity is cheaper in your area. Thermolec has been around for a long time:http://www.thermolec.com/boilers.htm

psilliman001 · 07-11-2009, 11:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by secutanudu

I have a 15 year old oil-fired weil mclain boiler. With all the incentives and rebates going on right now, I am planning to switch over to natural gas.

I have gotten some estimates from a few HVAC/Plumbing contractors, and I have seen similar price ranges for different brands of boilers, including:

Weil McLain
Buderis
Munchkin
Baxi
Utica

I want a boiler with the ability to add an indirect fired water heater at some point, though I will not be doing that now. I have a small house (about 1300 square feet) with radiators on the first floor, baseboards on the second floor.

Anyone have any preferences of the brands above, or another brand you would recommend? Thanks!

how do you control the heat properly with a mixture of heating mediums. generally baseboard needs a higher temp than radiators and if you're running 195* water for the baseboards you're overheating the radiators, very wasteful. you really should design a 2 temp system with your new setup and provide for your other dhw plans . i know it's off topic but better plan now b/4 u inst. something you will not be happy with.........Jack.....btw weil mc. is very hard to deal with as far as warr. for leaking sections , they usually always claim it's your fault for using 'bad' water.

**beenthere** · 07-12-2009, 12:26 AM

Hotter then they need to be.
But not really over heating them.

psilliman001 · 07-12-2009, 02:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beenthere

Hotter then they need to be.
But not really over heating them.

...... your first sentence is the way i should have phrased my sentence . i'd like to see the rads at about 140 or so in case the downstairs would tend to over heat or heat up too fast b/4 the baseboard gets to sp. thats why i like 2 temp systems......Jack

secutanudu · 07-12-2009, 08:16 AM

I was looking into my pipes, and it would be fairly easy to convert the upstairs to its own zone. If and when I get my new boiler, I will have that done too. I know I would still have the same boiler temp for mixed devices, but at least I could control the temp independently for the floors.

**beenthere** · 07-12-2009, 08:22 AM

Your second floor won't call for heat as often as the first floor.

Rads do fine at high temps. Just you really don't need that high temp most of the time, if ever.

If you get a mod con with outdoor reset.
The ODR will control the water temp for heating. And you won't be feding high temp water to th rads. Except on the colder days.

yuri · 07-12-2009, 10:04 AM

The outdoor reset is a GREAT idea for any boiler/saves energy. My plumbers are not big fans of condensing boilers yet. Takes a long time to pay off the initial extra cost. I was reading in some trades mags that they have to be installed incredibly well/system flushed of ALL impurities or they have problems with water hammer noise etc. Heat ex gets a thin film of cutting oil etc/runs hotter than necessary and actually creates small water bubbles from boiling on the heat ex. Bubbles then cause pump to cavitate etc. Unless they are flushed and done right there may be big problems in the future.

secutanudu · 07-12-2009, 10:08 AM

What does outdoor reset mean?

yuri · 07-12-2009, 10:13 AM

Google: outdoor reset boiler control. Lots of info there. There are less expensive units than this one, just an example for U.

http://www.energysolutionscenter.org...et_Control.asp

**beenthere** · 07-12-2009, 10:55 AM

A strainer should be installed on any replacement boiler. And mod/cons exspecially.

Not as hard to install and set up as some make them out to be.
A lot of reuctance from some that don't like to install strainers.
Or mess with checking flow rates, and ODR setup.

yuri · 07-12-2009, 11:09 AM

Thats the dilemma. Customer is willing to pay top dollar for high quality equipment but never knows if the guy installing it cares or knows how to do the proper setup. Jerry unfortunately had that experience. Good thing we can do a lot of work for ourselves.