Trade question Boilers

Linden

I am looking at a new Nat Gas boiler to heat radiant system, The original is a 60,000 btu unit.

A Larrs unit looks favorite maybe a Peerless!

Any opinions? Bad experiences etc.

Being at altitude like 6000ft can either of them be "tuned" for clean altitude combustion.

Dennis

Jamie Hall

Step one. Check your actual size needed — do a heat loss calcustion and, particularly if this is radiant flooring, check how much heat you can actually put into the floors. The decide what size boiler you need. It might be that the original was sized correctly — that does happen — but there's no harm to checking.

SuperTech

For Radiant heating I would prefer a condensing boiler. Weil McLain 97+ or Triangle Tube Prestige Solo are great boilers with a nice fire tube heat exchanger. The only boilers that I consistently see problems with due to quality and I recommend staying away from is anything from Navien.

Pretty much every condensing boiler needs to be commissioned and tuned with a digital combustion analyzer when installed. Adjustments for higher altitude are done at this time.

No matter what you install the quality of the installation is the most important factor that affects reliability and efficiency. The best boiler in the world will perform poorly if the installation instructions are not followed or if it's not sized properly.

mattmia2

Larrs being a water tube boiler is a different beast than most are used to so it has to be installed correctly. On a radiant system the installer has to be very careful to design the system to keep the boiler from seeing low return water temps, they are more sensitive to return water temp than a cast iron boiler.