Opinion on conversion from oil to natural gas

jimt

I am looking for opinions on converting my current oil fired Burnham AFG V-14A-T boiler to natural gas. Current equipment is:



Burnham cast iron boiler was installed 1987.

40-gallon indirect water heater was added 2005

Argo out door reset control was installed on boiler 2011



I have gotten different opinions on oil to gas conversion:



1) keep current equipment and only exchange oil burner on boiler to gas burner

2) replace entire boiler with new gas boiler and pair it with gas water heater



Option 1 is obviously cheaper initially.



I welcome any opinions.



Thanks

Aaron_in_Maine

Depends

It all depends. I would replace the boiler being that old I would hate to put in the gas gun and have the boiler spring a leak in a year or two. Post some pictures of your setup to let us evaluate overall condition. Second I would bet your current boiler is oversized if so you also save by putting in a properly sized boiler.

jimt

Picture of current equipment

See pics



Thank for your comment.

Steve Whitbeck

oil

Like already said - install a new boiler AND if you have cast iron radiators think about high efficient fire tube.

The oil boiler won't be as efficient burning natural gas.

Change the boiler.

Steamhead

If you're really jammed for cash

I wouldn't have a problem with putting a Carlin EZ-Gas burner in that boiler. Yes, it's older, but very well made. I keep saying I'm going to replace my own V-14, older than yours, but never seem to get around to it. I'm running a Beckett NX on mine at the moment. It keeps on going and doesn't use much oil.



This is a "wet-base" boiler which, except for the front plate, surrounds the flame completely with cast-iron having water on the other side. This presents more heat-transfer surface to the flame and keeps heat from escaping thru the boiler's base. It also gives us much better control over the air entering the combustion zone. The result is a thermal efficiency 3-6% better than the usual atmospheric gas boiler.



The higher-efficiency condensing boilers cannot use a standard chimney. You may, or may not, be able to run intake and exhaust pipes for one of these in your existing chimney flue, but then you couldn't use the flue for anything else. Or, you could vent through the wall if a safe location could be found, taking into account snow-line clearances, clearances from windows and doors, etc. etc. This can get really complicated.



In Europe and elsewhere, where condensing boiler technology is not used for whatever reason, this wet-base, power-burner setup is the next-best choice. They call it "blown gas" and most times you can still use an existing chimney if it has a proper liner. It's not so common in the States- here, gas companies push atmospheric boilers because of their lower efficiencies, and see anything else as a threat to their revenue stream.



If the V-14 eventually dies, you could get another wet-base boiler and move the EZ-Gas to it. You may need a different air tube assembly, but you won't have to lose the burner itself.

bill nye_3

Depends

Do you have a gas pipe in your house already ? Or would have to dig up your lawn and the street to get a pipe installed ? Do you like a gas cook stove , gas dryer, gas fire place, etc. ? I do not have natural gas available in my area. I considered propane but the cost to buy all new appliances would not make the switch worth the effort.



I would consider a few upgrades on your current burner, maybe a pre-purge, post-purge primary control and a solenoid oil valve. Everyone hates the price of oil these days, but I think your money would be better spent tightening up your house than switching fuels. What you have is really not that bad.

jimt

Gas line

Some of the neighbors are considering having gas line installed and apparently there is discount for the more people that connect. Estimated cost to get gas to house is $600.



Currently have propane fireplace and propane for stove top. Would eventually change these to natural gas if boiler is changed.

presto1

riello gas conversion burner

I have done several oil to gas conversions, but used Riello gas burners.  The most critical part is to size the burner correctly.  Remember take into account actual btus delivered by your current burner, and make sure your new gas lines have the capacity required.  In upstate NY the oil prices vs the gas prices plus added efficiency resulted in a 50% fuel savings for the customer.  having a liner is critical because your new stack temperatures will be considerably less, causing severe condensation if not lined.  Obviously, clean the boiler before the conversion.  Also, try to time your conversion for when your oil  tank is almost empty. 

Jean-David Beyer

would have to dig up your lawn and the street to get a pipe installed ?

Where I live, there is gas in the street. Last summer they raised the pressure from nominal 15 psi to 50 psi and replaced the 60 year old iron pipe with somewhat larger plastic pipe.



My house did not have gas, but they installed that for free. I did have to pay a fee to dig in the street to tap the line. ($150, if I remember correctly.) But they did not dig the lawn. They pushed the new gas pipe (also plastic) with a gizmo they called a "mole." The only digging in the lawn was right by where the meter would go, where they converted from plastic to metal for the thing that supported the meter.

jimt

If I go new boiler option

If I go the new boiler route - what do you say about water heater?

Keep current indirect? or

Replace with new gas hot water heater?

Harper111

It is not permitted and will fail inspection

If the boiler was not originally equipped with a gas burner from the manufacturer, then it is not approved by the manufacturer.



The gas gun manufacturers will tell you the same, they are not approved to provide advice on Burnham gas conversions.



Contact Brunham and ask them yourself if you are unsure.



Your boiler will fail inspection and be in an unsafe and unapproved condition. Your only option is a full boiler replacement to a new Burnham gas fired unit or other unit.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Efficiency

why do people insist that gas is more efficient than oil?  Under all conditions?

Oil burns more efficiently because it contains less water vapor than gas. Its always been that way and always will. Until the condensing boilers came out gas couldn't touch oil for efficiency.

And if you have a condensing boiler but don't have a condensing load then what do you have? The same efficiency as a conventional boiler except for two things.1. modulation to better match the load and 2. less standby loss. The longevity of the mod-con and the repair costs haven't been proved out just yet. They have created a lot of work and are good for business though.

personally I would go with the gas burner as steamhead suggested

JMHO

Gordo

Troll Alert

Do not feed the troll.



Some boiler manufacturers have approved their oil-fired designed boilers to run on gas burners.  A few manufacturers will say yes and no, depending on who answers the phone.



There is, so far as I know, no good engineering reason why any oil fired boiler in good condition cannot be converted to run safely and efficiently on gas.  It has been done thousands and thousands of times.



For reasons which can be guessed at, Burnham has taken the position that they will actively oppose any gas conversion on their oil fired boilers.  Period.  NO good reason given.



They have put pressure on gas burner manufacturers to make it difficult to get gas burners to convert their equipment.  It also seems they have contacted many Inspectors to be on the look-out for those who dare to convert a Burnham.  They are indeed on the look-out for any contractor who dares to order a Megasteam without a burner and will refuse to ship such orders if they guess it will be used with gas.



Perhaps they are doing this so they can say to oil companies that if they install a Magasteam in a customer's home, that is one boiler that will not be able to be converted to gas legally.



Given this, it is not too far out of the realm of possibility that they would hire trolls, too. 

Steamhead

These jobs

all passed inspection with flying colors. Nice try.

Steamhead

Part of this

was the inherent inefficiency of the usual atmospheric gas boiler. A wet-base, power-burner boiler will show a higher thermal efficiency, for reasons noted above. This isn't the same as AFUE, but we've noted some problems with the way AFUE is calculated. 

Harper111

What happens if something goes wrong?

You need to tell the person considering this option the whole story to make an informed decision.



Two Important questions they need to consider.



If there is a warranty remaining on the boiler, and if so, will the manufacturer consider it null and void since the unit is not operating as per the manufacturer's certified configuration?



Who will assume liability if the unit should ever catastrophically fail?



Feel free to call up the manufacturer and share their insights with us all please. Most people are probably going to rely on the engineering and technical advice from the manufacturer that designed and built the unit to exacting standards.

conversiontime

just swap the burner

That setup looks clean and well done and the boiler from the outside looks good. I would have a good inspection of the boiler and then put a riello or carlin gas burner on. Overall you save a little on the burner by buying a package new boiler deal but you can always swap the gas burner into a new boiler. Many of us have converted oil boiler to gas and had no problems getting final inspections/permits but always check with local inspector and makes sure contractor pulls permits.if needed.

RobG

Harper111

Harper111, you have evaded and avoided answering the question, WHO DO YOU WORK FOR! Until you honestly answer that question you should not take a stance on this issue. I think it only fair that people know with whom they are taking advice from. So, once again, WHO DO YOU WORK FOR!



Sincerely

Rob Garcha

RSG Mechanical

Harper111

Same questions still remain to be answered here

If there is a warranty remaining on the boiler, and if so, will the manufacturer consider it null and void since the unit is not operating as per the manufacturer's certified configuration?



Who will assume liability if the unit should ever catastrophically fail?



This would be true for any boiler manufacturer that does not test and certify a conversion, would it not?

EBEBRATT-Ed

Codes

Change any control, any wire, any burner, any wire nut that is different from that which was furnished with the boiler originally and you probably violated the UL listing for the electrical on the boiler.

Be practical. Who cares???????

Steamhead

Why are you so afraid

to tell us who you are, and who you work for?



What are you hiding?

RobG

Unbelievable!

Harper111, you seem to have a biased opinion and yet you will still not answer the question. WHO DO YOU WORK FOR? !!!!

PLEASE, I am begging you to answer that one simple question.

P.S. I will understand if you don't answer until Monday when US Boiler Company is open.

Rob

kcopp

In most cases....

the warranty is only for the original buyer...not the 2 or 3 homeowner. When I have installed them I have a very clear conversation w/ the HO as to the pros and cons of a conversion burner. They know full well what they are getting. I have installed and gotten inspections on weil-mclain, Smith and Utica boilers. In theis homeowners case I am sure there is no warranty left on the V1 Burnham.

jimt

In most cases

I am not concerned with any warranty on a 27 year old boiler. More concerned that if I only change the burner and the boiler cracks next year that I wasted money on burner. Or are most burners interchangeable to another new boiler?

Steamhead

Yes they are

at most, you'd need to replace the air tube assembly. If you can find the right pro, go for it!

Harper111

What happens if something goes wrong?

Who has liability if such a modification causes a catastrophic failure?



The manufacturer?

The homeowner?

The homeowner's insurance?

The installer?

The installer's insurance?

The city inspector?

The city itself?



If it is the installer, have you ever called up your insurance company and received a definitive answer in writing?



Otherwise, it sounds like a risky thing to do even if the chances are small for something to go wrong.

Steamhead

Well, Rob

looks like you were right. 

RobG

Yeah

Between MLK Day and the east coast snowstorm It took Harper a couple of days to get back in the office.



I wonder if the reason he is such a proponent of boiler replacement is because if he had to change over from oil to gas, he would get his shiny new blue gas boiler at manufacturers cost?



Rob

archibald tuttle

maybe he works for the oil heat institute

convert.



I'm no real partisan of gas over oil but the fundamentals at the moment favor gas costs over at least a medium term arc.  The last thing i'd be doing 10 years ago was converting one way or the other as the annual market seesawed making one more or less expensive per btu.  And although i don't think we got to precisely what the original poster was using for radiation/convection I doubt if he's got a 1987 burnham that he can take advantage of condensing technology anyway.



That said, all this prattling on about dangers of conversions is some whacky stuff.  glad to have so many people putting that evil genie back  in the bottle.



dozens

of conversions. run great. great efficiency.  boilers clean as a

whistle (propane, lesser cost advantage, esp. this year, but super clean

burning).



and i - perhaps the last one to know - saw the carlin

guys at ASHRAE and they showed me their burner cover.  I was roundly

unimpressed.  i like to see the industrial art, not hide it.  until they

showed me the outside air attachment kit.  thumbs up idea although i

think they should go back to the drawing board and work out a tube feed collar and air adjuster that doesn't cover the whole burner. The current design means you have to keep taking the cover off to adjust

the air.  I like to get the meter running and make adjusts and monitor

on the fly. This would be a lot of stop and start.



i think this is an oversite they should work on, both from efficiency

standpoint and marginally on the safety side.  they tended to say they thought it was non-issue because we should believe in their

nominal air band settings by BTU.  maybe they do get good enough overall

results with set it and forget it, and i will concede that i went with that until the smart bell came out, long lasting sensors, reasonable price. (no i don't work for UEI,  since that kind of question has come up on the thread)



Going

back over my factory setting jobs, i found none that were way off, but milked another 5% or so

efficiency on many installs while having the peace of mind of keeping

the CO in the teens.



I have to defer to one of the alchemists

here whether the latency of heat in exhaust given the higher ratio of

hyrdogen to carbon really undermines the theoretical efficiency of gas relative to oil.  I guess if we are talking abstract theory the answer has to be yes in terms of percentage of potential energy captured.  on the other hand the energy per weight is higher for gas and the cost is so low.  but i don't have the math at my fingertips. anybody . . . ??! how much are we really talking in the theoretical difference.  i've googled around for 15 minutes and nobody seems to offer a simple mathematical comparison of the noncondensing efficiencies of the fuels.



and, in the NFN department, the higher hydrogen to carbon ratios are easier to burn clean over time in the real world (that is general concept and not perfect trend as propane seems cleaner than gas despite having lower hydrogen. But both kick butt over oil in the real world.



  There is nothing maybe so beautiful as a clean boiler with a beautiful conic oil flame (i get off on odd stuff, my wife still insists on the bedroom over the boiler room, but i digress).  But one frigging piece of **** and you're sooting like a ****.  there goes your efficiency as the boiler gets coated with nice fuzzy carbon insulation. So the real question is what kind of efficiency can you expect day in day out in the real world.



I used to get pretty decent results running multiple in line filters, and problems were haphazard.  i could run 2 or 3 years on the same nozzle beautifully and then get one bad delivery and go through 3 nolles in a week.  It was a few experiences like this that lead me to the multiple filters, (and big deep drop where i could fit them like FB-10s) although the best technology i ever saw was the waste oil burning stuff that uses supplied air instead of really fine passages and high fluid pressures to get good atomization and combustion.



But i digress. i'd convert in a heartbeat.  Your risk of high stranded costs is pretty low. Getting the gas to the boiler area won't be a stranded cost even if you evenutally change the boiler. So you're talking a very little bit of near boiler piping and even the conversion burner could quite likely be reused on new, or new to you boiler, or certainly resold.



Evenutally, i think manufacturers are going to be forced by the market to accept that folks are going to mixing and matching burners and fuels and should work to facilitate. Not to mention that there are gonna be thousands of boilers out there, maybe hundreds of thousands of very decent cast iron boilers for cheap that would accept that conversion burner if you ever did have a problem, because there are plenty of people who are putting in new boilers without doing the kind of thinking you are.



This nonsense about warranties and boilers leaking is a minor consideration.  You've got a 1987 boiler. If you just put a burnham oil boiler in a couple of years ago i could understand being conflicted.  But even then, you paid a bunch of money to Burnham for the boiler.  the burner is not even a burnham product.  To me, their lack of support for conversion is just a reason not to buy burnham products.  Because if a customer wants to convert you have to tell them they will be at risk.  That's ridiculous. And even having to mention it overstates that risk as the percentage of failures i've seen is zilch (other than steam boilers with bad LCW and one large commercial boiler that had a minor push nipple seep.)



I am not aware that Burnham or any other boiler manufacturer has offered any evidence that they were being hit for warranty claims with some alarming frequency on gas conversions being operated with the suitable BTU range for the boiler and for the firebox length recommendations of the conversion manufactuer. The only thing generally required is to change the draft regulator to a double swing (and i concede that i forget why that matters since there aren't standing pilots anymore. think i had this discussion on here once and somebody gave me an explanation that made a little sense.)



I hope there are other folks putting it to Burnham on this subject because i will not buy any of their products until they come clean on this. (or others who play the same game).



 I'd bet concentrated oil flame makes more thermal stresses than gas, but if they want to spec new chamber lining or that kind of thing, fine.  Or even if they want to form a partnership and test and approve one conversion and not others, can see them doing this to protect proprietary interests -- and as long as these are sold within a reasonably competitive framework I could see paying modest premium which they could capture, first to cover testing and then as profit margin. Or would still recommend purchases of boilers that are most flexible with regard to burners.



well, there's a novel.  Steamhead said it all best already.



brian





 

EBEBRATT-Ed

convesions

I suppose we should never have converted all those old robot snowmen boilers from coal to oil back in the day. The oil burners sure weren't listed for those installations were they?

I started in 73'. I worked on old oil burners some installed in the 20's that were still running. I am sure many of you worked on older stuff than that. Oil was cheap and you couldn't sell new burners even though the old ones were soot makers.

When the Beckett AF and Carlin 100CRD came out (about 1970?) we thought we had died and went to heaven.

So now were doing some gas conversions into oil fired boilers. Sure the equipment has changed, you better not be eyeballing fires anymore. You have to know what your doing.

A lot of people can afford a conversion but not a complete new system.

As long as the results are good and the installation is safe.............don't see a problem

jimt

Pulled the trigger

I appreciate ALL the comments to my question.  Just signed agreement letter with UGI to get gas to my property for a $526 fee.

What concerns me now is that April 2013 the quoted cost was $1,157. Is this a sign that gas prices are going to soar and UGI is baiting people to get signed on?

Zman

Soar?

I would not read too much into the utilities pricing. I have never been able to  guess have much they will charge for new service.

In order for your rates to soar, the entire world supply would have change. No local supplier could do that.

At the moment heating oil costs 3 to 4 times more than NG.

Check out this link.  www.eia.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls‎



Carl

Harper111

Good Advice: Get Liability Coverage in Writing

Here is some good free advice that others are not commenting on. Please be careful to get it in writing the contractor's insurance policy and the fact that they assume all liabilities for the unit and its proper safety in operation subsequent to the conversion.