Should I get A new gas boiler

Carl1979

100 yr. old home , 3,800 sq. ft. shortly going to be tightly air sealed. and have maximum insulation possible added. I have a 6 yr. old steam boiler with tankless hot water, Burns Oil now. Dunkirk model esb 5200 input 280 mbh.

Present oil cost and electric space heater use is $4,710 a yr.

Local gas company saids same amount of heat from gas would cost $1,816 a year I'm also hoping to save 20 % with the insulation can this existing boiler be converted to gas?

I can get 1% financing its seems I can save money and be more comfortable . is there any downside to this ? Thanks Carl

crash2009

A new gas boiler

probably wont change things too much.  If you need to have a lot of space heaters, changing to gas is not going to fix that.  Have you ever thought about upgrading the existing steam pipes to maximise the btu's you are producing?  How many radiators do you have?  

100 years ago you would have had enough radiators to heat the house thoroughly with the windows left wide open, and not need space heaters. You could likely almost do that today if you played your cards right.  You could use oil or gas to do that.

BobC

before you jump

Be very wary of the gas company claims. In Boston right now the difference in fuel costs is probably not more than 15%. I had the gas company quote on a replacement system a few years ago and even with their deep discount the price was only about $1k less than replacing my oil burner using a competent installer.



If that boiler has not failed than the same problems will exist after it is replaced by a gas boiler - probably more because the people the gas company uses to install boilers could give a flying crap about the kind of installation they do in most cases. In short you have to solve the steam system problems before you contemplate replacing a 6 year old boiler.





Is this single pipe steam? If so you have air vents on all the radiators, are they working? Do some get hot and others take forever to get hot? there should be main air vents on each main, are they working?



Post some pictures of what you have so we can see what your dealing with. Take some shots of the boiler from different angles and include the piping around the boiler. Also take a shot of a representative radiator showing thee input (and output if it's two pipe steam) plus ant air valves on it. there are a lot of competent people here who will give you their honest opinion on what you have.



Bob

Carl1979

the existing oil boiler gives off plenty of heat

It's just so expensive to run 2 gallons per hour = cost $6.00 to $7.00 per hour versus electric space heaters at .25 per hour each once its gets cold like now I just use oil the breakdown is $900.00 yearly for electric heat versus $197.00 for gas,



Oil heat And year round hot water $ 3,780 versus 1,619.00 for gas according to gas company figures for the same amount of heat and hot water produced



for a total savings of $2,864.00 per yr It just seems like the payback would be very fast especially if I just need to have the burner changed out .

jpf321

do those gas prices include...

delivery charges? taxes? any other small print fees? you better read a gas bill and figure out what fees besides the actual THERMS of NG are included... as far as I know I pay market rate for oil, nyc tax and a flat $3.50 for delivery .. my oil bill is very clear and understandable .. i've never met a gas bill that i could understand ..



yes for the equivalent BTU quantity of NG vs. OIL fuel itsel you may see that savings .. but how are you going to get it from their tanks to your house?



i absolutely hate it when the gas co says .. oh well it's $0.50cents/therm compared to $1.50/therm of oil .. oh yeah .. and we (the gas co.) need to charge you $0.65/therm to deliver it to your house, and there is a winter surcharge, and there is some special MTSCSAS charge and then of course there's local, state and federal taxes, oh and a Universal FCC Charge, and a 911 charge, and blah blah blah, and if one of our major gas lines blows up, we can't get fuel to you so we hope you stored enough extra gas at your house for a few days .. and it all comes out to a cool $1.45/therm.. how do you like them savings now?



maybe i'm exaggerating .. but do read all that FINE PRINT and ask about DELIVERY charges vs. supply charges.

Charlie from wmass

The down side of a new boiler

If installed by the gas companies I have in western MA or their golden boys off there list of "qualified" installers you will get installations like the one I submitted to the ugly boiler contest. Please look it up. A properly installed steam boiler is quiet even comfort. The other installs are what keep us busy fixing after the fact when te savings never show up.

Jean-David Beyer

Gas bills

My gas bill is easy enough to understand, but you do have to read it. Here is my New Jersey Natural Gas bill for October 19 to November 17 (I expect the next one very soon).



38.55 Therms x 0.7460 Basic Gas Service   = $28.76

23.13 Therms x 0.5282 Delivery                   = $12.22

15.42 Therms x 0.5280 Delivery                   = $ 8.14

Residential Customer Charge                       = $ 8.25



THIS SERVICE PERIOD GAS CHARGES     $57.37



So I figure the price per therm is $57.37/38.55

Mark N

Switching to Gas

The boiler you have is quite new, so I would assume it is quite efficient. Maybe you could have a power gas burner installed on it. Do you have a gas line to your house? If gas is a lot cheaper that oil where you live than you' ll definitely save some money. The boiler you have can handle 708sq ft of steam. That is a big boiler. It won't be cheap to operate on gas either, 280k btus/ hour is 2.8 therms/ hour. How many sq ft of radiators do you have?

Maybe your boiler is oversized to begin with.



Mark

nicholas bonham-carter

new boiler with gas?

i think the proper thing to do in this case is to get your boiler working right first. the parts you may have to buy can always be used on any replacement boiler in the future, if it is necessary to change. and then maybe only the burner needs to be changed.

first cut off the electric space heaters for a while, and see if all the radiators are heating up at the same time. your present boiler should have no problem heating the whole house, quietly, comfortably, evenly, and economically.

 a few pictures, as bobc has said, will aid in determining areas of improvement.

always remember that the original owner of the house would have expected to have a heating system which worked well without additional electric space heaters!!!--nbc

jpf321

here's a little calculator

http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/fuel_cost_comparison_calculator/



My last oil bill:

200.1 gals @ $2.859 + $3.50 + $27.75 (NY Sales Tax) = $603.34 for 200 gals. = $3.01/gal .. and I'm not sure what efficiency numbers to use .. but with my new S/F .. I'll go with 83% ..



JDB's bill above is $57.37 for 38.55 therms .. $1.48/therm at let's say also 83%.



Using the calculator above .. thats

$25.90/MMBTU OIL and

$17.95/MMBTU NGas

DIFF = $7.95



That's pretty significant ..JDB, please post your newest bill numbers when you get it. Since I'm using higher /gal price for oil. based on the time of my last delivery (12/6/2010)



If I use my pre-season oil price of $2.50/gal .. it works out to:

$21.52/MMBTU Oil

$17.95/MMBTU NGas

DIFF=$3.57



Which is much more palatable.

Mark N

Price per therm

My latest PSE&G bill came last week. PSE&G is in New Jersey. This is what I was charged.



Service Charge - $5.85

Distribution Charge - 141.694 therms at $0.3758804

Balancing Charge - 111.705 therms at $0.09596710

Commodity Charge - 141.694 therms at $0.70447584



Total gas charges - $169.65



169.65/141.694= $1.197 per therm



There is no tax listed on my bill for gas or electricity. Come to think when I had oil I don't remember there being a tax on that bill either.



Mark

jpf321

as a comparison ..

this is what my gas bill looks like (cooking and gas dryer only)..hopefully you can see my source of disdain.

http://screencast.com/t/A9jO7f32



I get both Heat and DHW from my Oil.

jpf321

looking good mark!

-

BobC

Something is very wrong

I own a six room house (11-1200 sq ft two floors) two blocks from the Atlantic ocean just south of Boston and I burned 350 gallons of oil for the 2009-2010 heating season with a nearly 15 year old Burnham v75 steam boiler. I'm retired so someone is always home and I keep the thermostat at 64 during the day and 60 at night. My last oil fill was last March.



Find out whats wrong with your system before replacing that boiler, there is no reason you should be using that much fuel. You already said your having a hard time finding someone to work on your steam system, that means your going to have to be able to diagnose problems yourself. Consider investing some money in the book deal - http://www.heatinghelp.com/products/Super-Deals/14/129/A-Steamy-Deal Once you've read and understood those books you will be able to know if they know what they are talking about. I've been doing 90% of my own maintenance on my boilers for decades.



Post those pictures and the people here will work with you to figure out what is wrong.



Bob

Mark N

How much?

How much gas did you actually use? This is an estimated bill with a built in minimum charge. What they overcharged you here will be taken care of when they read your meter.

PSE&G now has meters that can be read remotely, no need to access the house.



Mark

Carl1979

I knew there had to be a catch

The gas company is also the electric company here in Pa. They list the electric rate

at . 9 cents a kwh. but when all the fees are added I' m paying about 15 cents a kwh .

I'll bet it's the same nonsense with the gas rate they show . I'm going to be real careful before I go any further with a gas conversion



I think the best think to do now is get my present system running the best it can.

I'll post some pictures tonight You guys can see the monster that lives on the end of one of my main lines . and see the amazing 1 and 1/2 line steam system I have

thanks Carl

Mark N

Bigger House

Bob



His house is 3.2 times larger than yours So just for argument sake he used last year 3.2 times more oil than you. You used 350 gallons that would equal 1120 gallons for him. At $3.00 a gallon for oil that comes to $3360 for oil. And maybe he likes to keep his house warm, maybe 68 to 70.



Mark

BobC

i understand what your saying

Mark,



I know the house is a lot larger than mine and it could cost three times as much to heat, but it sounds like he has some real problems with the way the system is operating. If he can identify the low hanging fruit, he might be able to make a good dent in his current heating bill.



I just think it's prudent to get the steam system working correctly before you contemplate replacing a 6 year old boiler, especially when the gas company installers aren't known to do pristine work. A january install is going to be done in a big fat hurry with little attention given towards doing it right.



Once the system is working right and he has everything insulated he can take a look at switching fuel and or boilers.



keep the faith,



Bob

Mark N

How it run

Bob



Carl never states in any of his posts how his boiler is running. He just states that it is expensive to run on oil and is contemplating switching to gas. I have no idea if the boiler is installed right or wrong. I would not doubt there are things he can do to make it work better.



Mark

jpf321

here they only read every other month...

here is the bill from the previous "actual" month.

http://screencast.com/t/JrVH9aUOY



I know that $3.75+/therm is not right because it's basically the minimum charge .. but I wanted to simply show an example of the unclear convoluted nature of the bill.



Perhaps I'll get a copy of my Dad's (he runs gas for Heat and HW a few doors down) and I'll figure out a more realistic "Queens Res 1A" $/therm cost.



jpf

jpf321

anyone care to report cost/sq ft on their house?

mine is about $1.32/sq ft in yearly fuel costs for heat and DHW. @ with t-stat constant 70deg

Mark N

Cost

This is for just heating. I come up with $.62/sqft and if I include my basement which is heated very nicely by the standby loss, I come up with $.45. Total yearly gas comes out to $1.02 and with the basement $.74. I use gas for everything even the grill.



Mark

BobC

re cost / sq ft

My yearly cost for heating alone is $0.913 / sq ft. that is for a 92 year old house with R15 insulation in the attic but not in the walls - oil fired steam (assuming $3 / gal). The house is kept at 64 during the day and 60 at night. I think that year in Korea on top of a mountain had an effect on me  :-)



I really should just call in a contractor and seal the place up right - right after I do the other 12 things on the list.



Bob

World Plumber

PA Cost

This months bill works out to a $1.20 a therm. But you got to watch out for distribution charges. I've seen January and February charges where the distribution cost was way more than the gas charge. Ie; $112 for commodity charge and $193 for distribution charge. Overall with the upgrades to my system and closing up the house envelope I have net a large savings and a comfortable house. I can remember cold house and space heaters burning 1400 gal of oil a year just for heat. Now my total gas bill for the last 2 years has been $1079.86 and &1136.17. With an evenly heated comfortable house. How close I could get with the oil I don't know. I did get the oil consumption down to less than 800 gal just making changes to the burner. My biggest savings came when I learned how to set up the steam side of the system that more than halved my gas bill. From $2784 to the $1079 and a comfortable house. Looking at those numbers Probably could have gotten close with the oil. But the boiler decided to crack and I was having delivery problems. I was on auto delivery and they kept letting me run out of oil.

    Up sides more space where the oil tanks were. No oil smell, don't have to worry about getting the delivery in bad weather. Less maintenance cost.

   Down fall if something happens to the gas line you have no other option and you are stuck with the supplier for the long haul. You need good CO detectors and need to maintain them.

      You need to look at the cost of replacement and figure in the cost of gas piping your house and getting the gas service run to your house. Figure all that int the eqation is it feasible to do it now? I would recommend getting the steam side ship shape first. If there are problems there they may be bigger problems with gas. Your flame isn't as hot.

    They do make conversion burners that mount in place of the oil burner.  The efficiency of them has a lot of variables. They were big in the 70s and the past few years again. I was looking for one for a customer and there was a backlog of orders. One of my suppliers was waiting on 800 of them the other was waiting for over 700 of them. (That was when the oil thing went crazy)  Set up right they work good. If not set up properly they can and will be a constant headache.

   I wish you the best in your decision making. The plus side of a conversion burner is the option to switch back in the event of a gas line problem.

     Merry Christmas

Jean-David Beyer

Cost per square foot

For 12 months from November-December 2009 to October-November 2010 I spent $640.35. My house is 1193 square feet, divided into 745 downstairs and 448 upstairs. It is all target at 69F inside, except I set back the upstairs to 67F from 9PM until 8AM. Design day is 14F around here. Under these conditions, I get $0.5368 per square foot per year. I also heat my domestic hot water with the boiler and an indirect tank.

crash2009

My house is about 50 X 30.

 We heat 4 floors, one of the floors is a walk out bsmt.  We have no insulation. The windows are antique style single pane, 1/2 of the windows have no storms on them.  I have not entered 2010 yet.  My numbers from  Oct 2008 to Sept 2009 are Electricity $3656.00 and Natural gas $3170.00. 

The electricity bill of 3656.00 includes some space heaters in the winter and some air conditioning in the summer.  The gas bill 3170.00, I would break it down a bit and knock off about 1000.00 for showers and the clothes dryer. So about $2200 just for the steam. We are heating (72 F) 4500 sq ft out of the 6000.  The other 1500 stays around 60 F. 

My estimate for that year, to run the boiler, is about 50 cents per square foot per year.  We did a lot of work to the piping this summer and I don't think we will save anything on the heating bill but we will save on electricity because we dont need space heaters anymore.  I think we are more comfortable this year because the only complaints so far have been for too much heat.  I had to turn down a couple rad vents, and put in a couple TRV's.

Carl1979

Wow ! World Plumber

Sounds like you already at. Where I would love to be. And proof that it can be done. The number one theme. I 'm picking up on is to get my existing system in order . then consider my options i'm gonna take some pictures post them and see what happens

thanks Carl

jim_72

Gas Charge

JPF321  I live in Forest hills so were neighbor's . My Nov gas bill for steam heating/cooking/ DHW  under National Grid using Chief Energy in Brooklyn as suppliers was $1.38 per therm.Good Luck Jim

haaljo

There is a world market for oil. USA

gas is not allowed to be exported (at this time) . And US gas reserves are plentiful.

There is the problem of delivery by a monopoly but nothing much you can do about that as propane is insanely expensive. You will save a lot of money with gas but not as much as claimed by the utility. I have gss and also use radiant electric heaters at  half kilowatt hour or 8 cents/hr in Boston. The heater keeps my wife nice and toasty while I prefer cool temps. It's radiant like steam but they look like radar dishes. $50 at Costco.

Power buner conversion might be a good idea as your boiler's only 6 years old. Do utilties do conversion burners anymnore? I know steam techs have plenty of the old ones in their warehouses way far in the back in the loft.........because "Dad would never throw them out" :-)

jim_72

Gas Charge

JPF321  I live in Forest hills so were neighbor's . My Nov gas bill for steam heating/cooking/ DHW  under National Grid using Chief Energy in Brooklyn as suppliers was $1.38 per therm.Good Luck Jim

Carl1979

Pictures ,The Monster, and the 1 and 1/2 pipe system

I'm gonna try to get the pictures up and post under them what they are. Carl

Carl1979

picture one looks like a regular 1 pipe system right ?

but its got a steam trap under it and a separate return to the boiler so anyone know what this is ? All the regular radiators are similar to this. the monster in the metal box sometimes it brings heat into the vent in floor above it most times not.

jpf321

whitson?

I heard there was a steam guy on whitson...perhaps we should meet sometime and swap stories...

crash2009

Yes on pic 1.

Pic 2 must be The Monster, and from the bsmt, has the metal box around it.  Wow! I'll bet that one puts out when its working.  Where is the boiler?

Carl1979

existing boiler pictures

I thing the boiler is good, I was only considering changing it. because I thought natural gas prices had dropped to less then half of oil Header is 28 inches above boiler water line 2 pipes to header, steams dry, no problem . its the supply system that has some problems 1st do I have a normal 1 pipe system ? the return line under it is not what I thought a one pipe system has 2nd that small radiator shown plus the monster, in the box , and another radiator seem to take turns on which one won't work for the day i think my wet return is clogged at least at one spot ,Or a steam trap is defective or both and I didn't thing one pipe radiators used steam traps I am confused

BobC

Don't heat that cellar

Insulate that piping!!



Unless someone is living down there don't waste money heating it. My cellar is about 50 on a winter day, before i insulated the cellar was 60+; now that heat is up in the living room with me.



use a minimum of 1" pipe insulation on all the piping (the 1/2' they sell in HD is not worth the effort) in the cellar that you can reach.



Bob

crash2009

Yes

From what I can see, the boiler looks pretty good.  The equaliser looks small compared to the header though.  I am unable to see the Hartford very good.  In my non-professional opinion it looks like you have a one-pipe system that was converted to 2-pipe.  I am totally not sure if it was done correctly. 

There should be someone looking at your pictures soon that knows for sure whats going on with yours.

crash2009

Is that a bullet hole

 in the stove-pipe?

crash2009

bump

bump

Dave in QCA

Assumptions

Carl,

Can you verify some assumptions here.  We can't see your whole system, so it leads to a little bit of guessing.

1.  I assume that all of your radiators have one connection where the valve is, and one air vent.  Is that correct?



2.  I Assume the the 2 F&T traps shown in the pics, as well as the Thermostatic trap that is shown near a main vent, are all located at the ends of the mains, where the drip legs drop down and become a wet return.  Correct?



3.  Do you have a condensate receiver tank and pump, that puts the water back into the boiler?  Where do the wet returns go to?  To the boiler, or to a condensate tank?



4.  Do you have any kind of zone valves on any of your steam mains?



Having some answers to these items will help a great deal in understanding your system.

Dave in QCA

Beautiful old home!

Crash, what a great house you have!  It looks wonderfully preserved and maintained.  And, it has a very functional steam heating system too! 

Great job!