New house questions - LP or Oil, choosing a contractor

Wonk_2

I just bought a small house that will be a rental- it was in the middle of a renovation project and the previous owner had to move for a new job, so things are incomplete. The house used to have propane forced hot air, but the owner remodeling it yanked all that out and had partially installed baseboard, and moved a used System 2000 boiler into the utility room.

Now I'm picking up in the middle of the project and have some concerns. First of all, I called my boiler guy to ask about hooking up the system that the PO has partially installed and he gave me a quote, but he didn't have any comment on the appropriateness of the boiler or the baseboard. I did a heatloss calc using slant fin's app and came up with a BTU/H heatloss of 11895 based on a design temp of one degree because the calculator wouldn't let me input negative numbers. I should have a design day temp of negative 20 (Northern Vermont). The baseboard installed (or mostly installed) by the PO adds up to about 35k BTU/H at 180*, which is a lot more than the app recommends, but it's installed proportionally to what the app recommended, so I imagine the PO did a heatloss calc of some kind and wasn't just eyeballing it.

Questions:
1) System 2000 boiler (an EK1) is probably too big for this house, right? I hate to not use it because its here already and I have one in my house and like it, but no matter what calculation I use, the System 2000 is likely to short cycle?
2) If I'm going to use a different boiler, I'm tempted to switch to LP because of the difficulty of placing an oil tank and that a smaller unit would be nice to make space in the utility room for a washer/dryer. What boiler would you all recommend? I have no experience with LP boilers and my boiler guy doesn't do LP (he's from the oil company). There's a thousand LP dealers around here and they sell all different makes - I'd like to narrow it down before I go calling around.


Thanks...

Solid_Fuel_Man

Look into buying yoyr own L.P. tank if you go that route. May save you in the long run as you should get a better price and can shop around those 1,000 dealers. Get the smallest boiler with the highest turndown available.

lchmb

I would shy away from buying a tank. Depending on whether it's new or not it could take years to recoup the cost and if something fails and you need an emergency response to repair it, the cost could be hi. Most dealers, at least in NH no longer give a discounted price for owning you own tank. Let the gas co deal with the headaches.. As far as the system 2, you have it, I'd run it this winter and see how it cycles. You may find it works without issue..

Solid_Fuel_Man

Is look into it at least. Around here owning the tank saves almost 1/3 the price on every gallon. Generally 5 year or less payback. But I'm in the far northeast with only 3 major players in the L.P. market, so I'm sure things are different.

FWIW, there are many many tanks still in service that were manufactured in the 1960s up here. So a 10-20 year old used one wouldn't scare me off.

EBEBRATT-Ed

You haven't given us the btu rating of the boiler and your btu heat loss for the house is 11895.....that can't be right is that a typo?? That's the heat loss of a large family room.