Arcoleader

retdesigner

We have an Arcoleader A1 4P, Series 3BC J3. Can you tell us the BTU rating of this boiler? Would a Buderus G115WS4 with a Reillo burner and indirect water heater be a suitable replacement?

Steamhead

I'm assuming this is a hot-water system- has anyone done a heat-loss calculation on the house yet?

retdesigner

Yes, it is a hot water system. No heat-loss calculation has been done. How is this done? The Arcoleader is the original boiler in the house.

nicholas bonham-carter

Download the Slantfin heatloss software from their website, and use it to determine the heatloss room by room. The total will be the size of boiler you need.
If you want to go high efficiency, (mod-con), then you want a boiler whose firing ranges coincide with the heatloss at the warmer winter temperatures most prevalent in your area.
This is to avoid as much short-cycling as possible.--NBC

RobG

Most older heating systems were grossly oversized because they were installed in the days when fuel was cheap. You probably don't drive a car with a 454 cubic inch engine to commute around town? That is why a heatloss is so important. Size the boiler to the load.

retdesigner

I did the heat loss calcs and found out that for our house loss is between 80K and 85K BTUs. I have found a used Buderus G215-4 (149K BTU output with the Reillo burner) locally that is 6 years old. It was used for 4 years and has sat for 2 years with water still in it. It does not have the Logamatic 2107. If I were to buy it, what kind of problems should I look for? Rust in the boiler sections???? If I did buy it and installed a Logamatic 2107 on it, would it still save me fuel and do an adequate job although oversized?

KC_Jones

If that is your heat loss that boiler is almost twice the size that you need. Why do you want to put such an over sized boiler in your house?

retdesigner

The price is right. As long as there is no rust in it and it will save fuel, I was pondering it. No decision yet.

icesailor

RobG said:

Most older heating systems were grossly oversized because they were installed in the days when fuel was cheap. You probably don't drive a car with a 454 cubic inch engine to commute around town? That is why a heatloss is so important. Size the boiler to the load.

Its really disingenuous to say that. What people paid for fuel 50 years ago was just as expensive as it is today when allowances for inflation are taken into account. The competitive markets of yesterday are just as competitive as today. The main heating cost issue was would be building be sufficiently warm. Until the 1960's, there was never a big push for insulation. Not until electric heat became popular. All those Post WW ll Levittown houses in the Island of Long, how much insulation were they putting in them? The ones with the radiant floors and the boilers in the kitchen? Insulation might have added $100.00 to the cost of the new house and that might be a competitive deal breaker.

To say that heating systems were installed oversized because fuel was cheap is to parrot a talking point of the Wall Street Crime Syndicate. That fuel companies were trying to rip you off with bigger heating systems. They needed to be bigger because builders couldn't sell spec houses stuffed with useless and un-necessary insulation and weather stripping.

Find an old IBR H-22 heat loss guide. Pages and pages of **** factor tables. If you are using the H-22 book or Slant Fin Heat Loss Explorer, there are only two factors you should ever use. ".25" for uninsulated outside walls, and ".07" for insulated 2X4 walls or "05" for 2X6 walls. And the difference is so monor, you might as well use the ".07" factor.

RobG

You finally found me out ice! I own the " Wall Street Crime Syndicate"! You are absolutely correct, older boilers were never oversized. Now I just have to figure out what to do about you now that you have this confidential information! I guess the question is, can you keep a secret?

icesailor

What's the secret? Oil and gas boilers were sized by the designers or installers to make the houses warm. The last thing they wanted when they were done was a call about a cold house.

I learned how to do heat loss when I had given plans to two wholesalers. One had done a few for me. I knew they worked, I knew what his prices were. he was also unreliable. The other person, I did a lot of plumbing business with. His price was so high that I was embarrassed. I really wanted to do the job with the second, more reliable guy. I asked him how he came up with what he had. He told me that his Uncle taught him how to do it and that was how he always did it. Like his uncle taught him. He gave me his copy of the IBR H-22 heat loss guide. I took it home and figured it out. Its a course. Then I understood why his quote needed the next larger boiler, and there wasn't enough wall space for all the radiation specified. He was taught to use the factors for uninsulated houses. At least everything was equal. There was nothing nefarious about what he figured or how he did it. From then on, I did all my own.

It drives me crazy when I see everyone blaming old dead installers for "oversize" heating systems, put in 60 to 100 years ago, when there wasn't a lick of insulation in the building, and the heat loss is almost 4X greater than a insulated building. Then, the "experts" that come here and blatantly state that oil companies put big nozzles in oil burners so they can sell more oil. Total BS. There are so few privately owned oil service companies in New England now. Almost all are owned by Corporate entities that sell oil or gas and not service. Maybe you haven't noticed the few here who worked for many different oil companies who they finally got tired of the abuse.

Funny thing is that when I used to do a heat loss calculation on an existing building with heat already installed, I always measured what was already there. When I compared what was there, with what was needed after improvements, you can almost tell whet factors were used to come up with the needs of an old house.

Bob Bona_4

A 215 for 85k? Nuts. The 215s are really geared for light commercial. I would not do it.

Robert O'Brien

Initial cost pales in comparison to the $3000/ year oil bills and that is being conservative and without inflation, $75,000 over 25 years and more likely close to twice that!

Steamhead

More to it than that, Icy.

The old coal-fired boilers were almost always oversized relative to the installed radiation. This resulted in longer periods between firings, which the lady of the house appreciated because she was usually the one who handled the boiler. The resulting slow combustion rates produced a lot of smoke, but that's another story.

So here came the oil guys in the 1940s-1950s who sized the conversion burner to the size of the boiler, rather than the installed radiation. IIRC, that's how the Beacon and Hydronic Rating books first came to be published.

Now it's time to replace that old coal-converted boiler. The guy goes into the basement and looks at the boiler, then proposes one of the same size. He figures that size worked for all these years so it'll work again. And it will, but at what cost?

And the companies who sell fuel, and whose profits depend on moving as much product as they can, laugh all the way to the bank. Here's one example of how bad it can get:

One of our customers has a 1960s vintage American-Standard A-505 boiler on a Webster Type R vapor system. The boiler is oversized for the system but not the worst we've seen. Before she bought the house, someone had replaced the original burner with a Beckett. This would usually work well, but they did so many things wrong that it used way more fuel than it needed to.

We got in there and straightened it out, and her oil consumption fell by a third. The oil company was not happy to lose this cash cow, but they couldn't do anything about it. Their "techs" spent maybe 45 minutes there each year and as far as I can tell, never did a combustion test.

A third! I think she got her money back within the year, after that it was all savings.

For a few more examples:

http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/146509/serviced-every-year-we-were-speechless#latest

http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/132567/one-of-the-worst-maintained-oil-fired-boilers-weve-seen#latest

http://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/146504/your-magic-wand-isnt-working#latest

And these are just the one we took pictures of.

So who's zoomin' who?

SWEI

Steamhead said:

So here came the oil guys in the 1940s-1950s who sized the conversion burner to the size of the boiler, rather than the installed radiation. IIRC, that's how the Beacon and Hydronic Rating books first came to be published.

Now it's time to replace that old coal-converted boiler. The guy goes into the basement and looks at the boiler, then proposes one of the same size. He figures that size worked for all these years so it'll work again.

Or maybe they were being "conservative" and rounded up to the next largest size "just in case." Meanwhile, some insulation is added to the attic and perhaps a bit of weatherstripping to keep the drafts down a bit.

20 years later, the gas conversion guy comes in and again rounds up to the next size "just to be safe." Throw in another round of envelope improvements thanks to one of those early 1980s tax credits.

By the time we show up, there's a 480,000 BTU/hr boiler heating a house we figure needs 120k at design conditions. And that's before they've decided to install some really good windows.

clammy

i would have to agree that the g215 -4 is way oversized and you will have issues .Save your money and get the right size boiler most likely a small g115 maybe a4 section.In thepast i have taken out your exact boiler and installed a g115 and the home owner saw a reduction of about 2/3 in there oil comsumpition and they did not have a indirect ,they used a bock oil fired tank and still saved .Do yourself a real favor get a pro in there and get it done correctly with the correct size boiler that 215 is way oversized and cannot be down fired to want you need and run correctly and will have short cycling issues ..A properly sized and installed boiler will save you in the long run weather you stay or move .I would still go with a budersu there 3 pass oil fired boilers are some of the best .What you spend now you will save witht the right sized equiptment as long as it is properly insatlled and set up .There s more to getting a new boiler then just the boiler and it all must be looked at in all the jobs i do i just replace it all it all done it time and im not coming back to replace some thing that 40 years old that you wanted to save money on.This is a issue i see alot of low ball price and just cut the boiler out and add 2 couplings and done .Then sock it to them on every 40 year old part that was not replaced it will end up costing even more money and aggravation.Get it all up dated then if cdone correctly u should be issue free .To put it in persective you driving a 40 year old car with 60 year old tires ?I dont think so it all allpies to your boiler to look around your home you still watching a tube tv ? Move into the future and spend the money even though no one will see it your pocket will no with a lower oil bill .Sorry for the rant and i know money is tight but better to spend it wisely then foolishly and live with crappy results peace and good luck clammy

icesailor

@Steamhead:

"" More to it than that, Icy. ""

There always is. I usually write in generalities. And like you always say, "You Can't Fix Stupid". I told my son that. His response was that you can't educate stupid either.

Many people today don't give the service that you do or I did. Its all about "How Much?". The Service manager of that offending oil company only sees service as a big giant PITA, and the guys that do it as a big drag to the bottom line. They expect one guy to completely clean and service a boiler like that in an hour. Maybe put the service department on commission. Maybe they charge $100.00 for an annual cleaning and the tech gets $20.00. If he takes three hours to clean a mess like that, he still only gets $20.00. So why should he care? The Service manager doesn't care. The good guys quit and go on their own. But its hard to compete with stupid.

Personally, I don't think that ANY oil boiler should be cold start.

Warm starts will never, ever look like that one. With that yellow concrete build up. Then, all the crud inside. Oil companies that provide that kind of service get bought out by the big oil discounters who provide no service, but give you a list of people to call for service. Until they switch to gas.

IMO, there's a difference between neglect and benign neglect. One you just don't give a schitt, the other, you pretend and act like you do, but don't really care.

I just read this in the local paper this AM. Office Depot merged with Staples. Both were in trouble. They finally merged. Office depot was in worse financial shape that Staples, but not by much. So Staples bought out Office Depot as part of the merger. So, the top five executives of Office Depot, for running a failing company, will share $85 million in golden parachutes. The Chairman and CEO gets $46.8 Million. For running something in to the ground. I'm sure that everyone here would like to get some of that action.

clammy

Ice i could not agree on that cold start on oil boilers,but unless it piped w proper flow chk you can get thermal migration Personally i would rather see a properly designed and installed by pass or thermic so the boiler never see to cold a temp durning start up .I will say that durning my years doing oil service i always loved doing cleaning not only on the systems i installed but on those with dual aquastat that maintained temp always fairly clean and no crude between sections(hated that stuff)the few gallons of oil burned per month is quickly made up by not having soot insulating the heat exchanger and lower eff while raiseing the stack temp.I rarely do oil now except when some one getting the bums rush from the service provider or installing a new system .It s a tough one there s a big $ difference between slappy white and getting it right .Always enjoy your posts and comments ice some times out there but excellent all the same peace and good luck now to work lol

icesailor

@Clammy:

You been reading my mail?