Just wanted to thanks the good men of this forum for helping me thru my 1st winter

CoachBoilermaker · June 15

Thank you for teaching me about my heating system last winter. I changed a few vents, swapped in a Gorton #2 main vent, learned my thermostat, removed radiator covers, read Dan's book, adjusted the pressuretrol to +1/+1, etc. I call it a success, and the steam worked great. Bills were manageable.

I am thinking of getting a fireplace insert wood stove to augment the steam for next winter.

I have tankless coil, so my boiler runs 24/7/365.

Also, got the original service guy in. He only changed filter, nozzle, strainer. No brushing/vacuuming, and I've let that go. He said my 1945 boiler does not have the heat exchanger nipples that need brushing, b/c the gap is wider (or something like that). I also learned not to sweat every detail, and deal with a "good enough" mindset. When it breaks, I'll get a new one.

Hope you guys are enjoying your Spring & Summer. What interesting stuff do you guys focus and obsess over in warm weather??

EBEBRATT-Ed · June 15

"Business" slows down here in the summer LOL

There is still air conditioning and

Looking at pictures of all the screwed up install that are done during the summer is always fun.

EdTheHeaterMan · June 16

Where I learned to do oil burners back in 1973, the fuel oil company had over 5000 automatic delivery accounts, the vast majority of these accounts were covered under the "Service Contract" that included annual maintenance.

All the service technicians would take their vacations during the summer months, and when they were working, oil burner maintenance was the service call of the day. With the occasional “No Hot Water” service call thrown in for good measure. Our fuel dealership did not do air conditioning installation/maintenance, so the majority of the service department employees were doing maintenance.

Many of the fuel delivery drivers were laid off for the summer and most returned in the fall to work another winter. I remember seeing one of our drivers working as a bartender at one of the popular summer nightclubs at the Jersey Shore. A bartender for 3 months, and truck driver for 9 months. Nice work if you can get it.

When I went into business for myself, I installed and serviced Air conditioning system in the summer. The fringe seasons (Spring and Fall) were filled up with maintenance agreement customer’s maintenance service visits. Now that I’m retired, I have nothing to do 24/7/364 There is that one day a year when I work for the government to file my tax returns. Can’t seem to retire from that job.

EDIT: @CoachBoilermaker said: "I have tankless coil, so my boiler runs 24/7/365."

You might want to monitor your fuel usage for the summer months. You can put a 120 VAC Hour Meter on the oil valve or oil burner motor and clock the time the burner fire operates for a few weeks. After you have 30 or 50 days of burner time logged this summer, when you are sure that no heat is being used, you can determine the amount of oil you use to make hot water per day. Then you can compare that to the cost of adding a stand alone water heater to your system.

Are you using a tankless coil or an indirect water heater tank? That will make a difference in how your burner operates for DHW. One design is more efficient that the other.

mattmia2 · June 16

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1857978#Comment_1857978

we haven't seen someone try to put a steam boiler on a gravity hot water system in a while.

CoachBoilermaker · June 16

@EdTheHeaterMan asked, "Are you using a tankless coil or an indirect water heater tank? That will make a difference in how your burner operates for DHW. One design is more efficient that the other."

Tankless coil. No tank. Original 1940s Delco GM boiler.

EdTheHeaterMan · June 16

That system may use more fuel oil this summer than you might want to. You can look into getting a separate water heater so that the oil burner in the big boiler does not need to stay on all summer. That old Delco might use over 200 gallons of fuel this summer. You might find that a natural gas water heater will cost less to operate. You need to see how things go this summer. You may be pleasantly surprised and keep the tankless coil, or you may want to look at other options.

My problem with tankless coils is the fact that a boiler big enough to heat your entire home is sitting there at 160° just in case you might need hot water for an hour or so each day. So for 22 hours a day there is heat going up that chimney or out that vent pipe. If you put that heat in a storage tank for 22 hours, there would be no air moving through the tank sucking heat out of the tank out the vent pipe to be wasted in the “wide outdoors” where it is already hot outside. An indirect tank will stay warm up to 20 hours, without a need for reheating, as long as there is no hot water removed from the tank. After the idol tank sits there for 20 hours, the burner will fire up for 10 minutes or so, to heat the tank of stored hot water up to 130°.

The idol boiler will lose heat out through the vent about every 4 hours and run for 10 minutes or so to maintain boiler temperature at 160° just in case you want to use hot water for something at 3:27 PM on a Saturday or 9:53 AM on a Tuesday

So you have one option where the burner operates for 10 minutes 5 times a day or you have the other option where you operate the burner for 10 minutes about 1.25 times a day. What do you think is more efficient?

Want to know when this hits home? When you are watching TV and no one is home for the extended weekend. No one has used any hot water in the house for several hours and you hear the oil burner, turn on for that 10 minute reheat cycle. Then you finish that movie and watch another movie. Then you hear the burner come on again, and no one has used any hot water for the whole time you were being a couch potato.

That is when it will hit you that leaving a steam boiler at 160° all summer might not be the best design for DHW. But I have been surprised by some really old equipment that was super efficient, even when everything I was taught about that old stuff contradicts the extremely low fuel usage. Ya' never know!

Steamhead · June 16

@CoachBoilermaker said: " Also, got the original service guy in. He only changed filter, nozzle, strainer. No brushing/vacuuming, and I've let that go. He said my 1945 boiler does not have the heat exchanger nipples that need brushing, b/c the gap is wider (or something like that)".

Wrong. Even a boiler of that vintage can get dirty. How would he know if he didn't even open it up 😡 ?

EBEBRATT-Ed · June 16

I love "those" kind of service "technicians". They throw a soot stick in the boiler and call it good. I wonder if they still even make those?

@EdTheHeaterMan I started in 73' as well. We had one oil driver who worked the summers and he would help us clean or install boilers. He was in his 60s but was a real good worker. He drove TT for a moving company for 34 years and was a piano mover so he was good at helping out with the boilers. And he had been taught to run the pipe machine and thread pipe.

BobC · June 16

I had a Delco 4 section steamer with a HW coil in it when I bought this place in '81, I had the same seup in my old apt si I knew how it ran. First thing I did was get a has fired water heater installed. Back then oil was over a dollar a gallon so it was well worth the expence. I'm the olly one here so it only takes 5 ccf of gas a month to have hot water. The only thing is the tanks only last 12-14 years.

Bob

ethicalpaul · June 16

Just wanted to thanks the good men of this forum for helping me thru my 1st winter

And thanks to the good woman who runs the thing, and the good women who are in this field and who might enter this field some day. Maybe not using so much gender-specific language might help, just a suggestion.