Replacing home oil-fired furnace

Joe Grosso

If you have hot-air heat, it is. But with steam or hot-water heat, you have a boiler. Knowing the difference will increase your standing with heating contractors ;-) .

Your trouble sounds like the chamber ("fire box") has collapsed. This is NOT necessarily a fatal condition as 99% of the time a new chamber can be installed, and the burner re-tuned to a more-efficient level. For the record, my Burnham boiler is 22 years old and is on its third chamber.

With that said, here are some caveats. The most important of these is the integrity of the heat exchanger on a hot-air furnace. These do not show obvious leakage the way boilers will, so a 25-year-old unit with a bad chamber may be leaking which will send exhaust gases into the house. If you do have a hot-air system I'd figure on a new furnace for this reason.

With hot-water or steam, the picture changes. If there is a leak in the boiler it will almost always show as water on the floor. In a poorly maintained boiler (oil or gas) it is still possible to have flue gases entering the boiler room but they are not ducted to all the rooms of the house. So if the boiler is a relatively current design with a high-efficiency burner, and is in good condition, it would probably make sense to just replace the chamber.

As far as I know, dual-fuel residential-size boilers currently available are those that will fire solid fuels (coal or wood) on one side and oil or gas on the other. I don't know of any that can be switched from oil to gas by just flipping a switch or moving a lever. But a pro can change an oil-fired unit to gas in about a day by replacing the oil burner with a powered gas one, and it can be changed back to oil in the same time. On the other hand, there's no way to convert a standard atmospheric gas unit to oil. So if you want future-proofing, get an oil unit and a conversion gas burner.

If you tell us more about your system- including the make and model of the boiler or furnace- we can be more specific.

Jan_2

Need advice

The home is now 25 years old and the 'contractor's special' oil furnace is showing great signs of strain (walls in the fire box are starting to pull away and are bending toward the fire box center, efficiency has dropped to under 80%). We would like to replace this furnace before winter but do not know the best system to put in (dual fuel? oil only?). Curently there are three zones and we would like to have an option to put in a fourth. Any suggestions for this west-of-Boston home?

joel_19

location?

If your in our service area we'd be happy to help . Is this a Furnace or a boiler ?

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Adam_10

how do you know when

exhaust gases are leaking into the house? When a friend of mine comes to my house in the winter, he often says he can smell oil (I have two oil burners, hot water and hot air furnace). Could this smell be from these gases?

Joe Grosso

Better have it checked

right now! You shouldn't smell anything if the equipment is operating properly.