1960s cast rez boiler life

Christian Egli

Cast iron can resist normal corrosion indefinitely giving you an endless lifespan.

Cast iron mainly fails by cracking. This is not as predictable. Accidents happen. Cracks can come from the way the boiler is operated and maintained. Crack can have their start from thermal stress, they can come from casting defects, they can come from a faulty boiler assembly or even from your pipes and your home leaning too heavily on the boiler.

There is no time bomb that says your cast iron is passed it.

Now, boilers get old anyway. They get all gunked up on the inside. The jackets get all banged up. The accessories break down.

Change your boiler at least as often as you change your kitchen, and make sure you take as good care of it as you do with your car.

Helpful?

Frederic

cast boiler life? xx yrs.

Whats the life expectancy of a cast iron residential boiler, US made in the 60's or 70's? ( trying to keep it simple this time )

Frederic

dam good start - thanks! Now - how bout this.
Whether to pull the plug and replace my 40year old gas boiler living in a tiny non-expandable utility closet. Boiler is working fine.

The Utility closet has out door access only! The closet is in Michigan ( we have winter and it gets dam cold) . I'm worried the heat exchanger might die of natural causes in winter. A new boiler install wont be any fun. So, should I replace before it dies( before getting into a winter) ?

The boiler is an Ack - o - Matic 72k net. It has a small foot print and most all the new nat drafts have too large a foot print to fit in the shoe box closet with the 40 gal hot h20. There are bedrooms on both sides of the utility closet.. the noise factor comes into play here too

bottom line questions - Would you replace"? when ?. with what?
There are lots of these late 1960's boilers in neighboring properties. all are operating FYI

Steamhead (in transit)

The Ack-o-Matic

might be even older than that. If I remember correctly it was the predecessor to the Hydro-Therm. It was advertised as "the midget gas boiler" and the term "midget" described its efficiency numbers quite well. They didn't know how to get enough heat-transfer surface in a small package back then, and fuel was cheap.

I'd pull that thing out and replace it, and watch your fuel consumption drop. Make sure whoever does the job runs a heat-loss calculation on your house- you might find you don't need as much capacity.

If space is a problem, remove the gas-fired water heater and locate an indirect heater somewhere else, like in a closet. An indirect heats hot faucet water using hot water from the boiler, so it doesn't need a flue connection. The lack of a flue also means it doesn't lose heat nearly as fast as a standard heater, which lowers operating costs. Indirects do cost more but their added efficiency and location flexibility is worth it.