GE replacement - Ron Jr. and Kenny

Ken_40

We cut a

GE L1 out of a house in Montclair, NJ some years ago. The scale at the junk-yard had it and a little near boiler piping @ 1,800 lbs! The book says the L1 weighed 1,675.

Took my man and I three 'B' size acetylene tanks and two QQ O2's. It took us three trips to the bone-yard to get it all out.

The worst part was the soot containment and breathing traces of sulphur when hit with the flame. No mask on earth can cut that "burn."

Ken_40

Ron,

Virtually evry Levottown boiler we pulled, was replaced with a gas conversion. Few of the G.E.'s were bad, the 550's in the ground were!

I am amazed that is NOT your experience? Does no one want gas? The obvious advantages are: Near silent operation, no soot from cleaning, no fuel oil odor when servicing, and best of all, both a 30-gallon tall boy AND a W/M CG-4 (or even smaller - any make ~50MBTU boiler) fit nicely. An AHE is ideal (although I only put a few of that configuration in.)

mtfallsmikey

Yes, Ron Jr.!

I'll take any logo plates that are intact. I'm missing 1960's era American Standard, Stewart-Winkler,New Yorker. I appreciate it very much, and will be glad to pay postage. Dan has seen part of my collection, have about 30 total, from boilers, HWH's, A.C. units. BTW, great workon the installs..just got finished spending 2 days at my wife's 1903 house busting out some old cast iron/lead/galvanized plumbing and replacing it. I feel like I've been rode hard and put away wet!

The Wire Nut

Great Job, As Usual

Ron,

I mean to write earlier but am pretty busy with the daughter. As usual, you must have a very happy customer there. I really like how accessible you've made common service items like the oil filter, for example. The boiler drain is accessible, as are lots of shut off valves. How you soldered all that pipe in that little space without setting the house on fire...

My only fear is that an architect might see these pictures and specify such installs from now on! :-)

Unknown

Ken

Do you work in the Levitt homes in PA ? I'd love to see some pics of them . We missed the exit for the NJ TPKE on our way up from NC and stayed on the 95 through Philly . North of Philly we saw a familiar site , the backyards of Levitt homes . Deja-vou ish .

Unknown

A big reason

there isn't a push for gas is there isn't much gas in the streets yet . I know my block doesn't have gas , but the major roads do . Back in the 70s they could've piped the whole town when they hooked every house to the sewer system . Every block got dug up . The best few weeks of my early years running in the trenches with my buddies .

I don't know if this is urban legend , but I heard that Levitt was going to run a network of oil pipelines to every house , like they do for gas . I wonder if anyone else heard this ?

Unknown

I'll start a collection for ya

I had a nice Federal logo yesterday we trashed . We come across A.S. pretty often . You like Bluerays ? I could send you one a week at the rate we're changing them out .

Unknown

Good point

about fires . There is decades worth of dust that collects above the boiler and sheetrock . We wet the area down , ALOT , before soldering .

Thanks alot Constantin . It's good to see you back posting . Have fun with your daughter . How old is she now ?

Ken_40

Nope. Did some work in PA, but...

Not on any Levittown's. My Levittown style homes were located in: Rahway, NJ (two independent and variant styles separated by a mile), Avenel, NJ, Berkely Heights, NJ and New Providence, NJ.

Most were OEM GE model LAL-25's, a few were York Shipley's - I forget the model numbers. When setup properly, the S.S. efficiencies were in the 83-84% range. Given the inverted flueway path, standby stack losses were almost non-existent.

Given the location, in the middle of the kitchen, the noise factor was about as good as one could get - in 1948-1954. Air atomization was and still is a remarkably quiet form of burn.

The Wire Nut

It's an amazing process...

Sundari is 7 Weeks young... still no sleep through the night though. It will come, I am told, some day.