Munchin Boiler

ChrisWilliams2

Hi I am looking at a house using a Munchkin Boiler which surprisingly is heating a lot of radiant floor space around 4500sq ft. It seems to be running well and looks ok. I didn't realize these are no longer made, in terms of long term ownership are these recent boilers? and if I wanted to upgrade it did they come out with a replacement or is there one you often replace it with? Thank you

Jamie Hall

A boiler is a boiler is a boiler... the Munchkins were very good boilers, and pioneers in the small footprint high efficiency boiler market, and a lot of them were installed. However, they neither were, nor certainly are not now, unique. There are at least a half dozen very good to excellent manufacturers of high efficiency mod/con boilers out there any of which could replace your Munchkin -- when and if it needs replacement. There's no point in "upgrading", though, until it does.

When it does, the two most important things to consider are getting the new boiler sized properly -- particularly for radiant floor type heating the match of the boiler to heat load is really important to get the best efficiency -- and second the familiarity of the installer with the new boiler, both in terms of how it should be installed and integrated with the existing system and, perhaps more important, his or her understanding of how it operates and how it is controlled for best results (and, for that matter, maintained). Boilers are not plug and play and forget it; every installation is slightly different, and details can really matter.

JeffreyArson

Such boilers have ceased to be produced due to outdated production technology.

ChrisWilliams2

Thank you that's good to know. The house was owned by a large plumbing contractor which is good and bad. We are just going through the purchase now so once I am in I will know more. I feel like overall it was very well done but I need to remove some stuff to make it more practical for me. i.e. they have oil,, munchkin, geothermal, no daw except for 2 rinnais Sadly all the systems do not look well maintained at all, but the price one the house is a little lower which hopefully will cover what it needs.

Jamie Hall

Be very very careful before you start removing stuff and putting in shiny new stuff. I assume, for instance, that your Munchkin is oil fired, since you mention oil. Do your sums and due diligence before swapping out the Munchkin and the oil for something else. It is unlikely, at best, that you will recover the investment in any reasonable time, if at all. You also mention two Rinnais for your domestic hot water. Gas fired, I would assume, though electric ones are available. Again, do your sums and due diligence. In particular, evaluate how well they meet your hot water needs. If they do, you will not recover the costs of replacement, and it's rather unlikely that you will see any significant reduction in the cost of the hot water.

Maintenance is another matter. All three of these units should have been maintained regularly. If they haven't been, or even if you ;have some doubts in the matter, it would be a good investment to have a qualified person look them over and clean and adjust them properly. This also applies to the geothermal installation -- which is quite specialized work.

Further, with regard to the geothermal, it would be well worth examining how it is integrated with the Munchkin. This is a control problem, usually, and again, is a rather specialized field. Proper integration can save considerable energy; incorrect integration -- which will depend as much on the characteristics of the geothermal system as anything -- can result in no savings at all, or even extra cost, as well as unsatisfactory heating.

ChrisWilliams2

Thanks I appreciate it. This house is a crazy the owner is a big plumbing contractor and the house has a weil McClain oil boiler, munchkin LP, earthlink geothermal, and a wood fire NY boiler. I am told they are all connected via one large loop so whichever one you want to use can be turned on.

For me I really just want a reliable system, and this is too over the top for me. I will definitely work with a pro. maybe through here, I definitely need a good pro but ultimately I would like to end up with 1 LP boiler and he geo or 2 LP boilers for redundancy and I really would just prefer an indirect hot water setup and lose the rinnais/ But i am going to take it slow and as usual this forum is again such a great help. This is my first house with radiant floor heat and I have always had oil boilers and very comfortable with those and outdoor resets, etc but this is a new thing for me for sure.

Jamie Hall

Eek. Is this the place mentioned the other day with the Earthlink geothermal? Copper in ground? If so, what I said then still applies -- even if it works at all now, which is somewhat unlikely, it's going to be an ongoing toy (read: pain in the neck). In my opinion, you might find that setting things up to switch between the oil Weil-McClain and the LP Munchkin might be worth doing, depending on fuel price -- but I wouldn't be surprised if BTU for BTU the WM were the cheaper of the two to run. LP is almost always at least as expensive as oil, over time, and frequently more so -- but you will need to do the comparison for where you are.

For domestic water heat, you might well find that adding a good sized indirect to the WM might be the best way to go -- or with a little more complexity you might be able to add it in such a way that it could be fired either by the Munchkin or the WM -- depending a lot on how they are plumbed and controlled.

May I make one other suggestion? As you say, slow and easy! And the first thing to do is going to be to make yourself a really good diagram of where all the pipes go, where all the valves are, where all the pumps are and which way they go, and what controls are on the system and what they control. I have a suspicion that your piping and controls may not be quite the ordinary setup, and doing that will save you -- and any pro. you bring in -- a lot of time and grief.

ChrisWilliams2

Yes the heating stuff is crazy here. I would much have preferred one really good system as opposed to all of these but I suspect this is like a computer guys house with 7 different switches and routers. Unnecessary but fun for a installer and original owner. Once I am in I will learn more about what I have and I am told they will give me a walk through of the whole system and design as well. Hopefully it helps. I agree with you also that I will more than likely just keep the WM and Munchkin. Part of the desire to lose the oil is that they also installed 3 upright oil tanks, not roth but looks just like them. They are empty, not even sure if they ever had oil in them. The space they are using would be great to get back, maybe I could relocate 1 and sell the other two. Going to check everything out after moving in, and then plan plan plan, before breaking out the saw Only exception is the well pressure tank and filtration system is shot but that will just be replaced with like components and is more straightforward to do.

hot_rod

I think there are like 65 brands and models of mod con boilers that would replace that Munchkin. I think Munchkins hit the streets in 2002, so some are closing in on a 20 year lifecycle, not too bad considering this was the pioneer of mod con boilers in the US.

If you have a ground loop GEO with proper PE (plastic) tube in wells or trenches I would certainly look to save that. It should provide heating, cooling, and DHW, and efficiently so.
It sounds like this system was well planned, designed, and installed possibly state of the art in its day?

SuperTech

The three oil tanks could definitely be a blessing.  You will have the ability to stockpile oil when the price is low.  It's a shame that the geothermal system is a Earthlink, thats going to be trouble.  The munchkin was a decent boiler in its day, once HTP worked out the bugs with the early versions.  They definitely are maintenance sensitive and I wouldn't expect the munchkin to last as long as your Weil Mclain boiler.  The Weil Mclain I would consider to be the most reliable and longest lasting of your three heating systems.  I consider it more reliable because it could always be repaired using standard oil burner parts that any decent service technician should have on their truck.