new boiler help

Mike M.

OK, I've looked at the Baxi online and it appears to be everything I need, but... does anyone have any direct experience with this unit? Is the quality good? Is it reliable? How hard is it to get parts? There's a whole lot more that can go wrong with this thing than with a cast iron boiler.

I did a heat load calculation on this house and about 30,000 Btus are needed. Looks like the radiation was sized pretty good to meet the load, but the boiler was way too big (see above).

What are the odds of the National-US boiler lasting more years? It's 40 years old but I replaced the circulator and gas valve about 5 years ago (the only moving parts). Other than that the only thing that can go wrong is a leak and so far that hasn't happened. What started me searching for a replacement is I'm getting nervous about the age and of course the ineffciency of such an old boiler. Maybe I'll just hang on to it for a while yet and see what happens. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Mike

Mike M.

Looking for advice on selecting a new hot water boiler.

House: in southern Minnesota, 900 sq. ft. 1 story rambler built on a concrete slab, built in 1964, fiberglass in walls and attic, fairly tight single pane windows with storms. 68 total feet of 3/4” copper finned baseboard (Edwards brand) in a split loop.

Present boiler: 40 year old National-US (Crane Co.) model 99-5, 100,000 Btu input, 80,000 Btu output, 60,000 Btu I-B-R, with Bell & Gossett series 100 circulator. High temp cutoff set at 180 degrees. Boiler reaches this only on the very coldest days of the year. Usually boiler only gets up to 150-160 degrees before thermostat stops calling for heat, so boiler is probably over-sized.

Considering: Viessmann Vitodens 200 with domestic hot water. I like the compact design. Since this house is so small I could really use the space the present boiler and water heater takes up.

Would the Vitodens be a good choice or would another type be better suited. Opinions?

Mike

Dan Peel

input - output

Your heat delivery capacity (68ft @ 400btuh/ft) is less than 30,000 Btuh. Your best performance match will be with a modulating boiler. Additional features (such a condensing) will be of limited benefit feeding baseboard heat emitters. In our market the Vitodens would be overkill and we would lean towards an NTI Trinity or even a Baxi for your combined DHW and space heating application. The Vitodens is a wonderful choice for many applications but not for all. Enjoy.......Dan

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Nron_4

boiler selection

For this kind of heating system the baxi is abetter bet with baseboard systems , they require hoter water than what you can get out of the viodens (167 F* ) max ,is there highest water temp and baseboard needs to run higher than condensing to get heat from baseboard , condensing starts at 140 F* and lower for the extra energy saveing from a condensing boiler

Ken_8

All I can say is...

The Baxi would not be my first choice.

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