boiler size

John Ruhnke · October 2006

> I have a question I am renovating a house and 
> installing a oil fired boiler. My house is 
> currently 1800 sqaure feet,totally renovated with 
> new insulation,windows etc. I Am planning on a 
> future addition of about another 800 square feet 
> more or less. I went to the local plumbing supply 
> house and asked what size boiler would be right 
> for my home ,they told me a 3 section peerless 
> model . I purchased it and a friend of mine tells 
> me he thinks its too small. I did two online 
> calculations and asked a plumber and the seem to 
> say its ok. I used a calculator on Oil boiler 
> warehouse site which says after my apprx. 
> addition I would need to have 72259.9btu and I 
> downloaded a heat loss program from slant fins 
> site and it says 41,304btu/hr I think that I must 
> be doing something wrong on that one seems kinda 
> low but I am not even close to an expert. My new 
> boilers rating varies from 75 to 131mbh DOE,65 to 
> 114 IBR mbh. I would appreciate any help you can 
> give me thank you 
 

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tom_59 · October 2006

I have a question I am renovating a house and installing a oil fired boiler. My house is currently 1800 sqaure feet,totally renovated with new insulation,windows etc. I Am planning on a future addition of about another 800 square feet more or less. I went to the local plumbing supply house and asked what size boiler would be right for my home ,they told me a 3 section peerless model . I purchased it and a friend of mine tells me he thinks its too small. I did two online calculations and asked a plumber and the seem to say its ok. I used a calculator on Oil boiler warehouse site which says after my apprx. addition I would need to have 72259.9btu and I downloaded a heat loss program from slant fins site and it says 41,304btu/hr I think that I must be doing something wrong on that one seems kinda low but I am not even close to an expert. My new boilers rating varies from 75 to 131mbh DOE,65 to 114 IBR mbh. I would appreciate any help you can give me

thank you

John Ruhnke · October 2006

You should be fine......

Tom,

Most boilers and most heatloss's are oversized. They have to be because they are not very accurate and if they underestimate the homeowners will be cold and mad. If they overestimate they will pay more money in fuel bills. No one ever really tracks the fuel bills and knows when they are paying to much. So the heatloss writers do the safer thing, they grossly overestimate.

Here is a question for you. Was the heatloss at the oil burner supply house real easy to do? Much easier then the slant fin heatloss? If so it is most likely a simplified heatloss. Simplified heatloss's are always less accurate and they will have a multiplier to overestimate much higher to compensate for that.

If you did your heatloss properly, it sounds like the boiler will be right for you. If it were my house I would not get a bigger one. A bigger one will cost more in fuel bills to operate. The high side of your calculations is 72259.9 btu's covering 1800 square feet. From past experience that sounds right. That leaves you with over 40,000 btu's for a 800 square foot addition. That should be plenty of extra btu's.

John Ruhnke

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boiler size

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