Propane boiler questions.

jayguy31

Hello and thanks in advance for the help.
I have a propane furnace that is original to the home from 1991 its a heat maker plus. The tank will now leak when we lose power and intermittently when it cools down slightly. When I took the cover off and moved the insulation the cap has heavy rust on it and it appears whats holding it together is the rust. Instead of trying to hunt down a tank and it appears parts no longer exist, I have been looking at boilers on ebay. Based on some of the prices I have seen, I think I can save a ton of money doing a self install. The problem; I know a lot about a lot of things but propane boilers is not one of them and not sure what im looking for. Can I go tankless? how many BTU am I looking for?

I have a single zone direct vent boiler. The house is 1k square ft. Any help in the correct direction would be much appreciated.

JUGHNE

Look at the nameplate rating of the existing boiler, It will say something like Input BTUH xxx,xxx and Output Btuh xxx,xxx.

Then do not use that number to size your new boiler. There is a good chance it is almost twice the size it needs to be.

Can you post pictures of the entire installation and a good shot of the nameplate. You say the house is 1,000 sq feet? You should get some interest here with the pictures.

Aaron_in_Maine

Yes the heat maker should be retired. I have worked on a few of them over the years. They were ahead of their time but based on age it should be replaced. Depending on where you live it is probably double the size you need. First step would be to do a heat loss of your house and go from there. Depending on if you want to go high efficiency or not and the amount of room available. I would go with a smaller sized boiler and either a indirect water heater or a on demand water heater separate from the boiler this is the way to save you the most in fuel cost.