Best Of
Re: Need help finding boiler replacement
Which ever boiler you chose to replace your current one, you should also pick the company that will install it best, and how well they will service said replacement.
Intplm.
Re: WiFi thermostat for steam system with programmable cycles
While what Ed said would save fuel. I am not the person to do that. With current prices of materials and labor it would be throwing good money after bad. If you are interested in a new boiler please contact me, we can discuss your options. Cycles is not going to save you much. Adding a vaporstat and improving venting will do more. The benefit is the vaporstat and venting can be used with the new boiler and won't be wasted funds.
Re: Experiencing a high failure rate with air vents, why?
What pressure does your system reach on its cycles? High pressure can cause your problem.
Re: Drill Bits & Taps
I like to use left hand bits if i'm dealing with broken bolts.
Get actual cutting oil like tap magic with extreme pressure additives, it makes a huge difference vs just nondetergent sae10 oil or water displacer.
A tap and die set is nice to have for a lot of other reasons. An option on the drills is to buy some common sizes of good bits and a cheap full set of letter, number, and fractional just to ream the holes to finished size. A good drill, decimal, fractional, metric and tap chart is a good idea to have.
mattmia2
Re: WiFi thermostat for steam system with programmable cycles
You are not going to see much savings by adjusting the cycle time. A BTU is the amount of energy that it takes to raise one pound of water one degree. if you do that once an hour for 30 minutes, or you run the burner 20 times per hour for 1.5 minutes. You are going to see the same usage within 1 to 2 percent. The only way to get the oil usage to go down is to move the burner up to the place where the dead man that designed that boiler wanted the flame to be located.
That way the oil burner will operate at 80% efficiency in stead of 50% efficiency. (meaning only 20% of the flame's heat will be lost up the chimney). Now you are letting over 50% of the heat from that oil burner's flame get lost up the chimney. I guess there are not many old timers that are interested in that job now a days.
Re: Ghost or Gravity feed - not fixed with replacement TACO FLOCHEK
are you sure he took the piece of cardboard out of it before he put it in
mikedo
Re: Electric water or Indirect water heater?
I'd pick a heat pump water heater, second choice would be a resistive electric water heater (which I am quite sure will last a lot longer than 7-10 years), third choice would be an indirect which has so much installation cost and makes you keep running your boiler all year just to heat a few gallons of water per day, it's a solution that only a plumber could love.
Re: Is my Burnham Independence kaput?
Are you in New England? Some areas have a high chloride content in their water that has accelerated problems with Independence boilers rusting out above the water line.
