Oil Boiler ROI

@H2OSKI

Not to be sarcastic but your doing pretty good with what you have. You will probably burn more energy doing the calculations than the new boiler will save.

EK has a good reputation and requires there dealers to be trained on there equipment. They are not foolproof but over more than some of the other choices.

The EK boilers are great and are known for reducing oil consumption. I do like the 3 pass boilers that you mentioned as well. They are all great options, but proper sizing and the quality of the installation is everything. Like Jamie said, the installing contractor makes or breaks the job. All things being equal I'd prefer the EK myself. But in your situation not enough is known about the installers to say that one estimate is better than another.

Or if you want to spend that money anyways get an a2w heat pump for shoulder season and use your current boiler for aux heat for when its too cold.

"What you do need to do, though, is make sure that the person or persons installing the boiler have studied the house to make sure you have the right size boiler ."

As an initial sanity check, follow the process outlined in this article:

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/replacing-a-furnace-or-boiler

to estimate your heat loss using your past fuel usage history.

Just back-of-the-envelope. You don't say where in CT you are, but Hartford has a design temperature of 8F and had 5072 heating degree-days in 2023. If you used 714 gallons, that's 138,500 BTU per gallon, so 99 million BTU. Figure burner efficiency of 85% and you get 85 million BTU/year.

Divide that by 5072 heating degree-days and you get 16,759 BTU per degree-day, or 698 BTU/degree-hour. With a design temperature of 8F that's 62 degrees, which gives 43,293 BTU/hr at the design temperature.

I bet you have a pretty tight house, that's pretty good for 3500 square feet.

Yikes! Maybe consider cutting wood for a new hobby! You're not TOO far from coal country to go that route! It could be half the cost or better!

OK, 60,000 BTU/hr then. Still not too bad.

@H20SKI , it sounds like you have an electric water heater – do you want to convert that to a tank heated by the boiler?

Here are some calculations to consider (if you use less hot water per day, the answers will be proportional):

In Connecticut, residential electric rates are average $0.30/kWh, which means it’s difficult to compete on cost to operate (that’s about $12.50 per gallon of oil on a per unit of energy basis). If we do a quick calculation at 64 gallons/day with a 64° temperature rise (58° to 125°F for hot water), that’s 35,800 BTU/day. For a 30-day month, that would be $100 (94 EF electric tank), $41 (75% eff indirect at $4/gal oil), or $47 (Heat pump water heater COP 2.0, although it will add heating load to the home in the winter so the net cost is higher than $47).

Although you do not have a direct match because it looks like you have a heat only boiler, you could take a look at AFUE and Real Boiler Efficiency page and our boiler selector page. You may also wish to review the NORA Report on Equipment Upgrade Incentive Project; this report shows the average savings of 25% when upgrading from older equipment to low mass with thermal purge heat and hot water boilers (Energy Kinetics design).

Best,

Roger

@H2OSKI , check the label again- you sure the boiler isn't a V-15A-T?

@JayMcCay , assuming that's what the OP has, the Burnham V-15A-T was made with a tankless coil. The V-1 series without the coil did not have the "T" suffix.

The Phase III is Triangle Tube's line of indirect water heater tanks. So the tankless coil is probably no longer in use. Assuming that's the case, it remains to be seen if the boiler's controls were properly modified so the boiler would not stay at full temperature all the time, which is wasteful without the coil.

Am I good or what? 😁 I have a V-14 in my house, so these are familiar to me.

The V-1 series was an American-Standard design that Burnham acquired around 1970 when they bought the A-S boiler division. When properly maintained, they run efficiently and last a long time.

The Energy Kinetics boilers that @JayMcCay talks about are excellent units, from what I've seen, though we only have one in our customer base. As with any unit, it has to be set up correctly, and oil dealers may or may not pay close enough attention to this. @Roger was a big help to me when I serviced one for the first time- and yes, it had the wrong nozzle and was making some soot as a result. We're going back to service it again later this year, I expect it will be in much better shape.

Any new boiler can be run as a cold start. Your existing one might start leaking if you let it go cold. I would wager that your indirect will fail before the boiler.

My recommendation would be another cast iron boiler and a new indirect. Any new boiler should have the ability to run a slight outdoor reset curve, warm weather shutdown, and cold start.

@H2OSKI , it's good to keep in mind that your application in Connecticut at $0.30/kWh, that's equivalent to oil over $12.50/gallon. Based on heat pump field performance COPs, it makes them more expensive to run below 35°F or 40°F outside with oil at $4.00 per gallon.

A heat pump water heater is even more challenging to run as it cools your home in the winter, with a new heating system, you will not have waste heat in your boiler room. As @Roger noted earlier in this thread, for a 30-day month, hot water would cost $100 (94 UEF electric tank), $41 (75% eff indirect at $4/gal oil), or $47 (Heat pump water heater COP 2.0, although it will add heating load to the home in the winter, so the net cost is much higher than $47).

Jay

HPWH has a COP of around 3.5. But 2.5 of that is coming from the environment, unless your boiler is throwing off significant waste heat that's heat you're paying for to heat the house.

In the summer, the HPWH provides free cooling and dehumidification.

Thank you for pointing that out, @LRCCBJ .

In the Brookhaven National Lab’s study, the oilheat EK1 Frontier achieved 74.9% summer hot water efficiency, even well ahead of modulating condensing boilers. Thermal purge makes all the difference when the tank and boiler are designed as system to work together. The link to the report is on the bottom of this page:

https://energykinetics.com/afue/