Old Boiler Curiosity

Lurkin' Murkin'

I would suspect that Leo is right, sadly. How do you run anything close to a proper efficiency test on a 3 times oversized unit that could theoretically only run for 20 minutes at steady-state, on the coldest day of the year, and that would be at water temperatures way above those specified for an efficiency test. Maybe the flue temperature, from a cold start, would be very low until the mass of everything got to temperature. That's a tough boiler design to baffle, and with it over-fired like that, I don't think you could get away with it. Some older boilers can be improved with a new burner, proper baffling, and down-firing the input (just as many BTU's are delivered to the system after these improvements, with less flue loss). I wouldn't even trust those CO readings, this stinks like Queen Latifa's feet...

Unknown

Took this Economite,

out of an old boiler yesterday,,zoom-in to see the circled analysis the guy got at the time(88¼%). The boiler is in the other pic. Could we be wrong about these "old lads"?

Dave

Steamhead (in transit)

That one

was likely better than the usual snowman, since it had more pancake sections. But it can't match a new boiler. Wonder what the stack temp was on that beast?

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Unknown

I`m sure,

you`ll remember this Frank,,here`s the tag hanging from it(I took the guys name out). I guess inspectors are inspectors as far as this authority is concerned. And don`t ever spill any fuel oil, they`ll make you jack the house up.

Dave

Steamhead (in transit)

Well

you'll have to get the fuel savings info from the owner, then. Shouldn't be hard to do ;-)

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Unknown

Funny thing is,

it fired at 225K, actual EDR is 145K@150BTU, the HL was about 80K(not many improvements), got the new one on the floor here, as soon as that`s gone it`ll go in.

Dave

Unknown

Funny thing is,

it fired at 225K, actual EDR is 145K@150BTU, the HL was about 80K(not many improvements), got the new one on the floor here, as soon as that`s gone, it`ll go in. Abatement guys are tough to find around here.

Dave

Steamhead (in transit)

Just looked at some specs

and that 88% combustion efficiency figure might not be far off. A 200 MBH input Columbia atmospheric boiler with 80% AFUE has a Net rating of 143 MBH.

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Unknown

Oh Man,

don`t tell me that now!, glad this HO doesn`t have a computer! Your killing me Frank! Maybe we should have spoken by Email? LOL. Nonetheless, it`s still oversized.

Dave

Steamhead (in transit)

What

are you replacing it with? Whatever it is, its lower water content will help.....

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Unknown

I`m taking a bit of a gamble,

she wouldn`t go for a M/C, so rather than blow the sale, I decided on a CGi-4, a little less "net", but it should do the job. It was $3500 to remove the asbestos, boiler only, none on piping.

Dave

Moses

Old boiler

The boiler is a pan-cake type.

The system is a 2,pipe gravity return

Scott Kneeland

old boiler

My back hurts just looking at the picture

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Leo

Variables and hangups

First off without checking yourself you don't know if the other guy's readings are accurate. If it was an oil to gas conversion was he trying to look like a hero. I see "the same oil guys" get higher readings than the next guy to look like a hero.

If the combustion efficiency is accurate what everyone gets hung up about is just that. My question is, how do you measure the overall efficiency of the unit? How do you measure the efficiency of heat transfer from the flame to the water? I have seen people save oil with a replacement system even when their combustion eff wasn't that bad by some people's standards. As Steamhead stated there will be a difference in water content. How much heat does it take to raise a pound of water one degree f? You're going to have less pounds of water now.

Leo

[Deleted User]

My handy dandy

Bacharach Fire Efficiency Finder says you need 11% CO2, w/ a 100* net stack temp, for 88 1/4% efficiency on natural gas. Zero CO? Don't recall a completely clean Monoxor sampler tube on any of those beasts. Probably filled out the tag @ the coffee shop.

Would have been neat to see just what the numbers really were w/ a digital analyzer.