Beating a dead horse.

billtwocase

very well said Johnny

No manufacture is exempt from product failure, it is how they deal with and improve is what separates them from the rest. I am among those that want to see a unit be capable of performing for 20 years.I like getting my money's worth out of something, and don't take part in the throw away mind set of today's society. I am a true Yankee. Things should be made to last, and preferably made right here

ChrisJ

Better or worse

As a homeowner I didn't interpret what Steamhead said as an insult to Burnham. My opinion was he was saying Burnham isn't necessarily any better than any other brand of boiler.



My opinion was and still is the person who installs the boiler is far more important than the name on it.

JohnNY

!

Agreed.

JStar

Ratings

I don't trust the 82% rating either.



All I know is from what I see in the field. Atmospheric boilers need just as many adjustments as a power burner. I've almost never fired up an atmospheric boiler and walked away without making adjustments. The excess air and O2% are always way high, and combustion efficiency is way low. And should we even get started on the horrible engineering behind draft hoods? I've seen draft hoods allow massive backdraft without shutting down on safety. Never seen that with a draft control and safety switch.



I do agree that the most important factor with any boiler is the installation and set-up. We install both wet-based and atmospheric boilers. We all see some horrible work being done by other "experts". Incompetency and ignorance in this field will never go away. All I can do is offer the best solution possible, and not worry about catering to "the next guy". I also completely inform my customers about the future possibilities of needing service from a company other than my own. 90% of them don't see it as an issue. It may be naive, but I have to operate my business as if I will be around forever. I should be the only company servicing my installs for their entire life.

JohnNY

Admittedly a minor point, but..

...after hurricane Sandy, I had people temporarily operating their atmospheric boilers off the cigarette lighters in their cars.



Most power burners draw far too much power to do that.

Steamhead

What I see from looking at the picture in the manual

is that the coil does appear to be above the "lowest permissible water level". But the probe-type low-water cutoff will stop the burner and call for water well above that point. And, on a gravity-return system, the water level will rise above the cutoff level as the water returns from the system, so the effective working water level should cover the coil.



That said, we've never installed a MegaSteam with a coil.

Steamhead

There are some boilers we wouldn't convert either

if the boiler is undersized (just ran into one the other day), grossly oversized, in poor condition, inherently inefficient etc. But most recent wet-base boilers run very well with good conversion burners.



If we do replace a boiler, especially a steamer, we lean toward a wet-base/power burner unit because of its better thermal efficiency. And we stock parts for the burners we install, so there should not be any servicing issues.