Coal furnace conversion

Water-Lou Mancusi

I just received a call from a shop owner who wants to update his old, coal furnace to a modern furnace. His old furnace already had been retrofitted with a retention head burner and he wanted to increase his efficiency with basically a new heat exchanger. When I arrived i noticed the old unit had just a single, convection style supply duct leading from the top of the furnace to the floor grate on the next floor. My first impulse was to update the unit but I began to think that by changing the fire box and surrounding heat exchanger this customer would actually not achieve his goal of lower oil bills. Actually, this old, huge cast iron edifice was probably better suited for this application than to change it to a modern heat exchanger. After all, this set up goes way back to stoking a fire in a centrally located cast iron furnace in the basement and letting the heat rise up to the next floor. Don't you agree that this fellow is better off to just leave the set up as is because he'll never recover the cost of a new installation in fuel oil savings? The retention head is about the only cost effective thing that would improve efficiency on a coal burning furnace and that has already been done. A new jacket would just perform the same function as the old one and probably not as well as this cast iron monstrosity. Please write me back if you think I should quote this job to replace the heat exchanger.

Steamhead (in transit)

That's an old \"pipeless furnace\"

which was horribly inefficient. Many of these were superseded by steam or hot-water systems. Why not do likewise?

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Water-Lou Mancusi

Thank You!

Hello Steamhead,

I wanted to write back to thank you for replying to my inquiry.

I would love to renovate this man's heating system however he has removed the common wall from the next store and is trying to heat the space of both stores with the one furnace. His double store front is all single pane glass from the turn of the century with old wooden doors with single pane glass and I'm sure the store walls are not insulated. The landlord offers no relief for this tenant and I'm not willing to change any structure without written permission from the landlord. To try to help this guy I'm thinking he should spend his money on some type of insulating drapes for the massive heat loss in the front and fire the other store furnace. He should look into programmable thermostats also. He's thinking by changing the one furnace jacket the fuel oil bills will be considerably less. I'm looking at an unhappy customer who will realize no relief on his oil bills and be further in the financial hole with the installation.

Thank you for helping me.

Mitch_6

Is it safe

sure you have no compromise int the heat exchanger of something this age.

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Water-Lou Mancusi

Thank you Mitch

Hi Mitch,

I wanted to thank you for answering my inquiry.

I'm thinking if the heat exchanger was compromised the entire store would smell of fuel oil and soot. I'm sure it's a good idea to update this old relic but the surrounding variables make it a bigger job than just updating the furnace. This guy is heating the town and doesn't realize it. I see it as insulate the shop first, install insulated glass and if you're still cold replace the furnace. I'm also not a big fan of third party requests. Those always turn into "he said, she said." His equipment doesn't get the shop above 55 degrees. That's serious heat loss. He doesn't understand heat loss, he only knows if the furnace doesn't make it warm-replace the furnace.