Big boilers in little houses.

Harvey Ramer

I serviced one today that takes the cake! 112 BTUs per sf! 1,500 (give or take) ppm co in the flue! Dang thing was suffocated. I corrected that of course and made some recommendations about replacing the beast with something that has less of an appetite. Gas bill for last Jan. $500 + It is only 1200sf well built cape cod style house.

Lordy lordy!! What were they thinking?

Harvey

KC_Jones

Just a homeowner, but really 500 for one month in a 1200sf house. You didn't typo? I live in an over 100 year old house 1500sf steam heat practically zero insulation and I am not even in that neighborhood. The homeowners have accepted this? Sounds like a replacement opportunity to me a properly sized boiler would pay for itself in what...2 years max? It truly amazes me what homeowners will accept. I have a good friend that just bought a "high end" 3500 sq ft house heated with....heat pumps. I cried for him since he didn't realize there was anything wrong with that. I wished him luck. I am starting to think a large chunk of this country has their head buried in the sand or something. Don't mean to offend people just drives me nuts.

Harvey Ramer

I did not make a typo.

Harvey

KC_Jones

Wow just wow...I am out of words. Well except for those.

Docfletcher

I've got 1650 sq ft. More if you count the garage, since that's where the boiler is. Kind of a indirect heat. The most I've seen for a gas bill was $151.00. 112000 btu in and 88000 out. With an indirect attached. I'd be surprised if it actually got that much out. Our stove is also gas.

Bio

Mine is 1200 sqft and my highest has been $150 with steam heat, drafty and poorly insulated house

Dave0176

They sized that boiler with all the windows open in mind in the middle of the winter. Lol

ChrisJ

1700sqft, well tuned steam and we peaked I think at just over $300 a month last year but typically mid 200s during a normal winter. Our next door neighbor with newer windows, a much smaller house and forced hot air typically spends a few dollars more than us.

I think this depends greatly on the area though. I'm sure $500 a month for NG in a 1200sqft home would be perfectly acceptable in International Falls MN for January.

Docfletcher

When we had forced hot air the gas bill was higher. I could never get the house really comfortable. It seemed like the blower would come on and you felt the warmth. As soon as the blower turned of you started to feel chilled. It was not quiet either, had to turn the TV up when the blower came on, back down when it went off, which was often.

Harvey Ramer

$500 in a month(1200 sf) for NG is ludicrous for South Central PA. Last January was a cold one for sure but it's still ridiculous.

Harvey

KC_Jones

Harvey Ramer said:

$500 in a month(1200 sf) for NG is ludicrous for South Central PA. Last January was a cold one for sure but it's still ridiculous.



Harvey

lol I agree I also live in south central PA and that is an outrageous amount for gas for one month in that size house....unless they like to keep the windows open.

icesailor

Harvey Ramer said:

I serviced one today that takes the cake! 112 BTUs per sf! 1,500 (give or take) ppm co in the flue! Dang thing was suffocated. I corrected that of course and made some recommendations about replacing the beast with something that has less of an appetite. Gas bill for last Jan. $500 + It is only 1200sf well built cape cod style house.

Lordy lordy!! What were they thinking?

Harvey

You explained the problem.

1500+ PPM of CO? What was the stack temperature? Did that shut off your DCA? Mine shuts off before that so it doesn't wreck it.

I'm not in any way suggesting that 112 MBH is a tad oversized. But the 1500+ PPM CO is like using stacks of dollar bills as an alternate fuel. Why was it so high? and were you able to get it down? 1500+ PPM CO is in the soot range. Is the boiler sooted up? If it is, you usually can't clean a gas boiler like you can an oil boiler and will need to be replaced.

There's two ways to fix that problem.

#1: Sell them a new boiler

#2: Fix it by cleaning and adjusting it and finding out why the CO is so high and fixing it, then, try to sell them a new boiler.

SWEI

10 year old 2,000 sq ft custom home, tightly built for the time. W-M CGa-5 installed -- on LPG -- for a design day heat loss of just under 32k.

Jack

A few years ago I was called out on a job for start up help. The house was maybe 1000 sq ft. He had a 175k 95% boiler. I asked him to come outside with me and asked if the homeowner was starting a district heating system, because, pointing to all the neighboring houses he had enough boiler to heat all of the neighbors houses too. His reasoning was that was what the wholesaler told him he needed. I went on to explain that it was his company, his responsibility, his license, etc and maybe he should get some training on these topics. Don't know if he did, but I never heard from him again. And the homeowner was left holding them bag.

KC_Jones

This is why I only read Non-fiction books, the real world is more interesting than anything people can make up. It really boggles the mind. "His reasoning was that was what the wholesaler told him he needed." And he blindly follows everything the wholesaler tells him? So in that story the homeowner is getting the shaft from the contractor, who got the shaft from the wholesaler (in a sense) and the wholesaler had a nice Christmas that year. I am just a homeowner, but this amazes me. I deal with this at my job daily when I ask, "why are we doing it that way?". The answer....because we have always done it that way. Doesn't mean it right just means it's always been done that way.

Steamhead

To put it another way- "You Can't Fix Stupid!"

KC_Jones

Didn't you hear? You can numb stupid with a 2x4. I just haven't found anybody willing to help me test the theory.

icesailor

Fairness:

In all fairness.

The reason I taught myself what I know about heat was because when I went into business many years ago, I was buying from someone who didn't sell the highest quality stock. He had a lot of low rent customers who only wanted cheap. But the boilers and amount of radiation was never a problem, it always worked. For one reason or another, a company I also did business with, was more on the spot with delivery. I gave them the plans for a new house with heat. A good friend/competitor was also figuring the job. When I got the quote, the house needed a big boiler and there wasn't wall space for the radiation. In a house that I had done before. I asked my friend who used the old guy. We compared material (not cost). The extra sized material was the difference. SO, I asked the owner (who was also the salesperson) how he came up with what I needed. He told me that he did it the same way his late uncle had taught him. (It was an old family supply business.) He showed me his IBR H-22 Heat Loss Guide and how he did it. He had these strange numbers that he used circled. I went home, called up IBR and ordered me a set of heat loss guides. Two weeks later the owner/salesperson dropped by and gave me his old copy of the H-22 heat loss guide. With the circled factors. Because it is a course, I knew how to do it. His uncle had taught him to always use the factor (.25) for all walls, whether they were insulated or not. An insulated wall should have been .07. He was basically taught to design radiation for an uninsulated building. From then on. I always did my own. The fear was the complaint of a cold or under radiated house.

I know I got a lot of grief behind my back because I used so little radiation and small boilers. While everyone else was designing for no insulation.

Wholesalers don't try to sell you what you don't need. They sell you want you want and if it is their opinion, that it can come back and bite you and them, they are going to CYA. They also stock what sells.

In New England and where I worked, I think that the most popular electric water heater is a 50 gallon standard height. Judging by what they had the most of. 30 to 40 gallon gas water heaters. But Wholesalers aren't out to rip you off by selling you things you don't need. They need your business.

Jean-David Beyer

Well, here in my part of New Jersey, design temp is 14F. I also have a 1150 square foot Cape Cod with a W-M Ultra-3 mod-con gas boiler. I have adjusted the ODR so tight that except for very warm days, it can run 12 to 18 hours straight for my radiant slab zone. I do not know the degree-days offhand, but the billing month from December18, 2013 to January 20, 2014, I used 102.53 therms of gas, and the boiler also drives the indirect hot water heater. I use no other gas. The bill, including gas, delivery, and Residential Customer charge, came to $112.65. Actually they bill the same amount every month: $56.00 a month each year.

When storm Sandy turned the power off for 6.5 days, I could tell it would never recover from the 11F "setback" that caused, since the ODR supplied only enough heat to maintain the temperature, not to recover from setback. And there was the huge mass of my slab to heat back up as well. So I diddled the reset curve to run 20F higher temperature water than usual. Once that recovered, I put the setback where it belonged, and ordered a natural gas fueled backup generator. (14KW model -- actually about 12KW).

Binnacle

Possible to make it run well

Have 200 MBH for 1400sq living space
(WM installed in 1961) and it runs like
a dream.

Assuming this is a steam system,
install a Vaporstat and set the pressure
low, perhaps 3-4 oz cut-in 7-9 oz cut-out
or even lower if pipes are all insulated
and everything tuned nice. Gas bill
should drop by half or more and
the temperature should stay quite
comfy.

Harvey Ramer

Not steam. It's hot water.

Paul48

Sadly........For every properly sized and installed boiler, there are probably 3 that are not.

WillieJ

My house was built in 1978. Using the slant fin calculator, the house has 50,103 BTUH heat loss at the 19 degree design temp. for my Western Washington state location. The original boiler was a W-M, 250,000 BTUH, 235k out.

We replaced the boiler with a wall mount Knight WHN085, 79k out. Might have been OK with a WHN055. My gas bills are cut in half. Since I have about 84,035 BTUH of baseboards at 180 degrees, I can use outdoor reset along with a 150 degree design day setting and be comfortable and get good efficiency most of the year.