I think our 40 year old boiler finally kicked the bucket

We bought a little house in New England last year, built in 1860. Heating is oil-fired boiler with steam radiators. Our Weil-McLain boiler is from 1985, which is honestly kind of crazy that it has been chugging along all these years. The thing is older than I am!

We’ve regularly had to add water to the boiler every 3-5 days, and over the past couple weeks it’s been every 24 hours. Previous homeowners had an auto-feeder, but it crapped out and we didn’t replace it. There’s been a burning oil/gas smell lately when the system fires up. This morning, we woke up and the temperature was 57 degrees in our house. We added water to the boiler and it fired up as usual, but then started leaking, which it hasn’t done before. We shut the whole system off and are running space heaters for the time being. It has been a brutally cold winter here and of course these things always happen at the worst time. Praying we can keep our pipes from freezing, insulation is pretty decent but, yeah, it’s cold outside.

After we moved in, we went through the whole rigamarole of getting quotes for HVAC, heat pumps, etc. I’ve spent god knows how many hours thinking about this, to the point where I have a whole spreadsheet of pros, cons, and every quote and detail we’ve gotten from contractors. This is merely my opinion, but for our circumstances, heat pumps and HVAC are a no-go. Both financially (electricity is exorbitantly expensive) and because I experienced living with a Mitsubishi pump in my last home and it just couldn’t get the heat up enough. National Grid will no longer install gas lines in our area, so that’s a no-go as well.

I love our radiators. Yes, oil isn’t cheap, but I see no reason to do open heart surgery on our heating system when quite frankly, steam does a damn good job keeping us warm. It’s possible our boiler isn’t 100% broken, but we have nothing to suggest there’s a leak in the pipes. I wish someone could come and tell us that the boiler has truly, finally kicked the bucket before I drop a bunch of money. But cmon, 40 years is a long lifespan. We knew when we bought the house that this day would come, I was just hoping it wouldn’t be in the dead of winter. New England Steamworks gave us a quote for installing a new boiler and the whole shebang. There’s a 3 week lead time. We’re having our oil-supplier (Petro) come out to look at the boiler and the chimney venting as well since I guess that’s free. We may give our plumber a call too for a second opinion, since he does boiler installations. 

I don’t know quite why I’m posting here, but this is one of the few places I can get unbiased information instead of people barking at me to get heat pumps or mini-splits or tear apart the walls to install high efficiency furnaces. I’ve put a lot of thoughtful consideration into this matter. I love our old home, and the only other thing I’d consider is switching to propane. It seems like whatever the solution, it will be rather pricey. But that’s homeownership I guess.

Interested in people’s thoughts on replacing an oil fired boiler w/ steam heat system. What do you wish you’d known, or things I should consider in this decision? Are there questions that I should be asking when I talk to technicians, or any other checks I can do to evaluate the problem? 

*** Edited to remove mention of the specific quote we received from New England Steamworks (they’re great tho!). Clearly I’m a newbie on the forum.