sidewall venting oil

Ragu_5

I personally have stopped both direct venting and power venting in oil-fired appliances; too many of both (not mine) have failed.

I have been going more and more to propane when there is no chimney involved due to the fact that the technology on those units are far superior, and reliability is quite high.

In your friends application, it may be wise to have somebody run the numbers for a propane fired mod/con; especially since your mentioned radiant. Have a fuel use/cost analysis done based on: Cost Per Million BTU's. Please don't be led astray by the cost per gallon; that does not tell the whole story. The efficiencies available in these units make them a viable choice.


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archibald tuttle

sidewall venting oil

OK, so a little better searching and I found some threads discussing pros and cons of side wall venting oil. I mentioned way down at the bottom of another thread that I have a friend who is renovating a 1920s farmhouse, has it gutted and is considering not putting a chimney back in.

I haven't followed up with him to see if this is a space consideration, monetary, or if he is just enamored of the side venting condensing boilers he is familiar with having done plenty of work in areas serviced by Natural Gas.

But here is the rub. He was thinking of going to propane and that is way less btu's per gallon. My recommendation was to consider side venting oil if a chimney was out of the question.

I also recommended putting his reno money into the best detailing for heating that he has already started, i.e. radiant tubes under floor and lots of new insulation.

So then he would have the option of a side vent kit for existing oil boiler or buying a new boiler that was built anticipating sidewall from the ground up.

I already told him that the sidewall vent is something else that is kind of a sacrificial piece of the heating system and will require service and could easily be the cause of a heating outage sometime. He is not going to have neighbor problems as he is out in the sticks (reason that his gas option is propane).

I have read from past posts that some guys think sidewall should be your last choice and others think well maintained boiler will do fine on sidewall. I'm certainly willing to hear some more of that discussion, but I'm interested in exprience with equipment that folks may have had actually installing these. Styles that you like or dislike or native sidewall oil boilers to consider as replacements.

Thanks,

Brian

archibald tuttle

failures?

What kind of failures are we talking about in what kind of time frame, generally speaking (and or specific horror stories are fund too)?

I replaced a Tjernlund motor and blower for a friend after it had been in service maybe 6 years. Obviously these are sacrificial products but he didn't have any chronic problems, only the catastrophic failure. I didn't find the parts hard to obtain. He was down for a day (I just lock the circulators on in the cold weather and he didn't freeze up) and it could have been quicker but I was doing it as a favor so I checked it one night and then brought the parts back the next night.

I know it is more moving parts in a hostile environment, but having had several of motorized vent dampers shut off gas boilers during peak heating season because of the end switch problem they had, I don't know if my current experience suggests that these sidewall vents are a greater source of problems than other add ons. come to think of it those dampers were supplied with the boilers.

The sidewall unit I serviced looks more like their current variable speed line insofar as mounting and physical appearance but it is definitely single speed. I haven't seen one of the new sideshots in the flesh. I also found an interested system at www.fieldcontrols.com . They have an externally mounted draft fan connected to a dual wall tee and combustion air is transmitted off the branch of the tee to the boiler where the duct is connected to the air input with a boot that has a vacuum relief in cast the intake is clogged. This seems like a pretty good idea. More parts to go wrong but not as much indoor air up the chimney. Cooling of exhaust by intake air takes place right at the installation, so that any condensing or corrosion seems likely to be limited to this one area. IF they build the stuff with this in mind and have replacement parts available I like the idea.

Only thing I haven't been able to figure out is why they would still use a barometric damper rather than adjust the airflow in the system so the draft over the boiler didn't need to be reduced. MAybe that is too tight a constraint.

Brian

The onl

Ragu_5

Failures...

Sooting up of the exterior of the house/sooting up in the boiler room (as per the disclaimer in the installing literature).

I got lucky. I've done 3 (years ago) and separated the intake from the exhaust, with no problems.

The local oil company had 13 installations that went sour ( soot inside and out).

No more for me.



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