Old cast iron furnace effiency

Pilule

Where could I find some information about an old cast iron, hot water, oil fired furnace?

Thanks

Fred

How old? Any dates on it? What brand boiler? What brand type oil burner? With some detail, I am sure someone on the site will be able to direct you to some information.

nicholas bonham-carter

What is the purpose of your enquiry? Is it to lower the cost of fuel? If gas is available then a gas burner could be installed , if your boiler is in good condition.
Post some pictures of your boiler, and its piping, along with some of the radiators, and we can advise.--NBC

unclejohn

Real old is 60 - 70%. Old 70 to 80%

Pilule

The furnace is a Warden King, it was made in Montréal in the '40. Here is what the name plate reads.
Warden King
Vicking Junior
Boiler #400
Hand fired 60,000 Btu/hr
Stoker fired 105,000 Btu/hr
Oil fired 109,000 Btu/hr

The burner is a Aero

The reason I want to know the efficacy is that, according to my calculation, the furnace can put out around 20,000kW. It feeds 2 apartments and I'm paying for the fuel and of course, the tenants don't give a damn about wasting heat. I want to replace it with 2 electric boilers so I want to know what size to use. I'm limited with the electrical current being limited at 100Amp per apartment. If the 2 boilers are too big, it means that I have to change the electrical board, which will add to the expenses.
Thanks

nicholas bonham-carter

Go to the SlantFin website, and download their free heat loss software. Using that will give you the heatloss for each apartment, and the boiler size.
Alternatively, you could tune up the present system, and put on a Honeywell Visionpro thermostat with remote sensor. The control could remain in a secure area accessible to you only.
Thirdly, you could install one modern boiler, equipped with Outdoor Reset for the building, this will vary the heat according to the outside temperature, and be unchangeable by the tenants.--NBC

Pilule

What's the purpose of changing the water temperature according to the outside temperature? I know It's been done on old furnace and now it's done on new ones.

wogpa67

Because your heat loss changes with outdoor temp. Less when it's warmer out and more when it get's colder. You setup the ODR to match the loss at your design temps.

Pilule

What would be the problem if the temperature was kept at the maximum all the time? Short cycling?

wogpa67

If it is oversized , Yes.
Is natural gas available?

JUGHNE

Is the radiation supply and return piping split up or accessible from the basement to allow installing 2 separate boilers?

Where does the domestic hot water for apts. come from now?
Are there electric ranges and clothes dryers in each apt?

10KW of any type of heat will take up nearly 1/2 of your 100 amp service.
The above suggestions sound good especially if NG is close.

icesailor

That looks like a gravity system. No pumps. I'll bet that bladder tank is too small for the amount of water in the system.

If the boilers aren't side by side, it isn't competitive to switch to just one boiler. Either way, someone might as well break all those stove cement seals, open the access doors, stop by the bank, and pick up a few bags of cash money. Start shoveling.

I'll bet that/those boilers were installed before you were born. Are you driving a car as old as that every day? Time to consider a change.

When it comes to old boilers like that, sooner or later, you have to give up al hope of a better yesterday.

Pilule

Yes it is a gravity system. Does it make the system less efficient?

All the radiators piping comes in the unfinished basement so it would be easy to run a second run of pipes.

The boilers would be installed side by side and I would get rid of the cast iron furnace.

The building belongs to my mother. When my mother gave birth to my younger sister, an apartment building, using natural gas, exploded, near the hospital, and there were dozens of people killed and burned and three was nothing left of the building but rubble. I know that natural gas is much safer, today, but my mother is terrorized by it.

Also, an electric boiler, I can fix myself and I can do the electrical installation but I wouldn't touch a gas system. Plus electricity is not that expensive in Quebec. I’ll have to do the math but it could even be cheaper. I know that a few years ago electricity was in fact cheaper than gas.

Thanks

icesailor

There's a Posting here on "Price and Cost". A good example of your dilemma. How much will a new electric service cost you for the new electric boiler just so you can fix it yourself?

If the gravity systems work well now and are evenly heating the spaces, there are many options. It depends on what you are willing to spend.

Whatever you do, you need to have someone come in and do a comprehensive heat loss on your building. And measure each and every room for heat loss and the installed radiation in each room for comparison. If anyone comes in and decides that you need Boiler X because it is the same size, unless he does all of the above first, politely thank him for his time and call someone else.

Things are different North of the St. Lawrence River. Replacing an electric service to power electric boilers might trip a requirement for a complete re-wire of the structure to bring it up to todays codes. Add that into the cost of the job. As opposed to the cost of replacing what you have there now.

IMO.

Pilule

The building has been completely rewired to separate the 2 apartments. The main are also brand new but are 100 amp each. To replace them to 200 amp each would be around $1,000 each. My guess is that installing 2 gas boilers would be as expensive if not more than electrical boilers.
I can do the heat loss calculation myself but the method I know is very long and tedious. I'm going to look at the method suggested in a previous post.
It's an old house and there is no insulation that's why I'm surprised that the furnace puts out only 20,000 kW and that's only by calculating the fuel consumption for a boiler that is probably no more than 75% efficiency.

vaporvac

Hydro-quebec! It was amazing how cheap electricity was in Montreal when I lived there. I didn't even know they made electric boilers, but there used to be alot of steam.

BobC

They charge 5.6 cents per KWH now

In Boston it's 24.5 cents per KWH because they arbitrarily doubled the cost of the supply portion of the bill to cover a projected spike in natural gas prices. The spike never happened, do you think they will give us the money back?

Another privatization scheme that has screwed the public.

Bob

JUGHNE

Is this one or two story? Does each apt have it's own water heater

Pilule

It''s two story and each have their own water heater.

Pilule

Are there some software to help calculate heat loss of a building?

wogpa67

You most likely will incur more cost trying to split that into two systems then putting in a mod con and submetering and charging the tenants or raising the rent a bit.

WillieJ

Pilule said:

Are there some software to help calculate heat loss of a building?

Here's the link if you have an iPad or Android device:

http://www.slantfin.com/homeowners-page/ipadapp.html#

Pilule

Anything that I would install to measure heating cost, for a tenant would be opening a can of worms.

I had to connect some equipment, in the basement, on one of the tenant's electrical board and told them that I would pay for whatever extra electricity consumption there would be, compared to the previous years. They told me that it cost them $40 ,per month, more than usual. If I used the equipment 24/7 it would have cost $15 a month at the most. I only used the equipment a few hours a day, a few days a week. After 3 months, I removed the equipment and they still claimed that their electricity bill was higher than before.

I only have 5 radiators to reconnect. If I did it in Pex, it would be real easy but a plumber advised me against it.

ww

My suggestion in addition to the other comments is to look on this site in the Heating Museum. You can look at different boilers here.

They are categorized by years in some cases. Once you look up your model number you may find alot of information there.