Steam heat - how much oil are you burning?

I installed a new WM SGO-4 this summer. I installed an interval meter to track oil usage, so I can give you some accurate info for Boston area for the last week or so.

From 11/22 to 11/27, my burner ran 13 hours with a 1.1 gph nozzle, or 14.3 gallons of oil. I keep the temp at 69* from 6AM to 8AM and 3PM to 10PM on weekdays and 8AM to 10PM on weekends and holidays. Night-time setback temp is 62*, but the house rarely gets that cold. My home is well insulated with tight windows. I have around 1800 square feet of space, heated with steam except for one 12x16 foot room with cathedral ceiling that is heated with water baseboard driven off the steam boilers with a heate exchanger.

My plan for this winter is to track degree days, sun versus clouds, and wind speed to get a good handle on energy use and be able to have hard data of relative energy savings versus my 70 year old ex-boiler.

waltham boiler

so Pete are you going to live with the banging pipes all winter long?

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jealous

Wow, I'm jealous that you can heat your whole house for 5 days on 14.3 gallons of oil when I burnt 50 gallons in the same time period with the thermostat set many degrees cooler. Do you have any sense how much oil you burnt in a cold week with your old boiler/burner, even if the days weren't totally comparable? My boiler is 25 years old and for what it's worth, the oil company 'claims' that it is 80.5% efficient.

Out of curiosity, how long are your typical steam cycles and approx. how often is the system kicking on? Since I stopped the short cycling, my system is kicking on every 2-3 hours, but the run-time is significantly longer than it used to be (it is often between 30-55 minutes), always turned off by the thermostat. Previously it would turn on 3-4 times an hour and run for only a few minutes each time (and this was during days that weren't very cold).

just double checked pressuretrol

> I'm going to have to sit at the boiler/thermostat

> and time it again, but this is what I was

> seeing.

>

> I have no idea if the pressuretrol is

> working, the gauge never appears to move and the

> pressuretrol is set to .5 and 1.5 on the

> differential (doesn't go to 1). From what I can

> tell, I have never seen the burner shut off

> before the thermostat is satisfied, basically the

> burner appears to run non stop from the time the

> thermostat calls for heat until the thermostat is

> satisfied.

>

> I'm sure this is going to sound

> stupid, but how would I know if the pigtail was

> plugged?

>

> All of the steam mains are now

> insulated, the home has limited (if any

> insulation) and all of the storm windows are

> down.

>

> I don't think the boiler has even been

> cleaned in 25 years, the oil company does not use

> tsp or similar chemical. The only thing I've been

> doing is letting the yucky water out every few

> days and refilling it.

Long story short (sorry, not short enough)

We're new to the system, this is our first winter in the house. Here's the progress we've made in just a couple of months with help from folks on the board and our local heating experts.

When we started, the system was constantly short cycling and not heating most of the radiators. Fuel was being burned at a high rate when the temperature outside was only in the mid 50s. The system would come on and off 3-4-5-6 times or more an hour and fire up for 3-4 minutes each time without ever heating most of the radiators (it appeared that the thermostat was shutting down the system at this time because the radiators near the thermostat were getting all of the steam).

We tried adjusting the anticipator setting since it wasn't set properly for steam heat, but then the thermostat never stopped calling for heat and the temperature was being overshot.

There were so many other problems at this time:

The mains were unvented, so the radiators were choking on air and heating in the house was very uneven. The two long main runs are now each vented with a Gorton 2.

The mains were uninsulated, so the basement was a huge radiator and about 30 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. All of the mains are now insulated with 1 inch fiberglass with 1/2 inch insulation on the radiator runs that were reachable.

The boiler chamber back wall had collapsed in and was full of soot so the fire was bouncing off of the back wall of the chamber. The boiler chamber has been cleaned and replaced, and strangely enough, this has basically eliminated a loud water hammer that was popping up to the left of the boiler where whoever installed the system decided to use the skim port to take steam out.

Most of the radiator vents were non-functional and had been painted shut. These have since been replaced with new Gortons and Varivalve Heat-Timers.

The pressuretrol differential was set to 2-2.5. It is now set at 1.

With the new thermostat (t87 digital round set to steam cycle/1 per hour per manual) and all of the other changes, the thermostat is calling for heat a lot less often (once every 2-4 hours, sometimes even longer depending on how cold it is outside). However, it is taking much longer than it used to for the thermostat to be satisfied (the system is much more balanced than it used to be and all of the heat isn't ending up at the radiators near the thermostat). It doesn't appear the system is ever being shut down by the pressuretrol, but I don't really have any way of knowing. One thing that hasn't appeared to improve drastically is the oil usage.

I see the burner fire up and run non stop until the thermostat appears to stop calling for heat because the thermostat is happy. Given that this is the first time I've ever had steam heat and a boiler, I had made an assumption this was normal.

The only way we have to measure oil usage is by looking at the gauge on the tank, but it appears to be right on since it's a 275 gallon tank, the last delivery was for 142.7 gallons and the tank gauge was about 1/8 to 1/16 under the 1/2 full at time of delivery. Last delivery was on 11/19 and the tank is now reading about 1/8 under the 1/4 mark.

When the oil company came out to rebuild the boiler chamber, I didn't see them touch the nozzle. When I asked about the fire he seemed to state was that if it wasn't set up right, it wouldn't be firing up, he seemed 'pleased' that it fired right up. He did notice a small oil leak inside of the Burner and tighented up a bolt which appears to have corrected that.

The draft regulator is new (as of August) and is not stuck closed.

One of the steam experts we had out pointed out that the near boiler piping is off since there are only 17 inches from the water line to the header vs. 24, so based on our clearance we would need a dropped header built. We have decided against doing this since we would prefer to hire him once we can afford a new boiler, 3 additional radiators and his time to connect them up.

Hi,

I'm far from a steam heating expert, but did have steam heat in my old appartment. When the thermostat requested heat the boiler would kick on and it would run until either the temp had been reached or the pressure would tell it to turn off. Sounds like you either don't have enough pressure to have the pressure regulator kick in or the pressure regulator is broken.

Michael

burner

The plate on the burner says 0.63 Gph, it doesn't say anything about pump pressure and degree.

On the service tag, the oil company wrote:

Size 100 Angle 60 Spray W

I wouldn't know what way to turn it to raise it back the old way since I'm not sure what it was set at/what it is now set at.

I have removed the vent on the radiator on the second floor and the radiator does not heat up any better than with the Heat-Timer set to max-open or Gorton D.

I haven't tried taking the radiator union off the the valve, but the valve does get extremely hot from the steam as well as the first few inches on the first radiator section.

Hi,

Don't think you can use time as a valid comparison value. Each setup will be different. Mine was an example a small boiler with only 5 radiators in ~1000sqft or so.

The main vent should only vent air until steam hits it then the steam should move forwards to the other pipes/radiators which then will vent until steam heats them.

You should have a pressure gauge on the boiler. I'd monitor that one and notice what the pressure actually reaches. I'd also pay attention to the main vents as well do they ever close.

The real pro's on this web board (not me) will be able to guide you on what pressure readings you should see.

Michael

Pete, can you get a copy of your burner setup and your boiler install guide off the web? The factory desired setup should be in the guide.

manuals

Waltham (boiler mfr) is out of business and I have been unable to find any of the manuals online or in paper format. I will see if I can find any information on the Riello 3KA unit.

Pete,

You can install an ac hour meter in series with the burner motor. This will track how long the burner is running, just multiply the on time by the nozzle size to get gallons burned. If there is an oil valve with a pre purge then just hook the hour meter in series with the oil solenoid. Only attempt this if you know what you are doing. Get another service tech, ASAP! You can't tell that a burner is firing properly without doing a combustion analysis. Sounds like to need to start working on tightening up the building envelope at this point. Hope this helps.

cycle time

So unfortunately I had to step out so I don't know exactly when the burner kicked on, but the latest run time was at least 27 minutes (could have been as long as 40). This was a fairly cold start given that the last time it fired up today was early this morning.

Good question. I've just been assuming a 1.1 gph nozzle will use that much oil. Not true?

oil co

I had them come out and look at increasing the fire based on the long period of time it's taking to produce steam and feedback from this thread. (The fact that it's taking a good 20+ minutes to get steam and 25-30+ to begin to fill the main and begin heating the radiators).

He said that it is firing at 1.0 and the Riello 3KA puts out 145 ?psi?. He said that in the past someone had accidentially put a 1.1 nozzle on it and the unit built up soot and had to be cleaned out and a 1.0 needed to placed on it (he showed me the service tags when this happened). He said that given the physical size of the boiler (amount of water it has), the only way I'm ever going to get the oil usage down is to get a new boiler, but perhaps I would still have burnt 8 gallons per day on those cold days vs. 10.

Per the advice in the thread, I had another oil co come in since the guy was very nice and is also a paid advertiser on the board. He looked at the size of the unit, piping, burner, etc and he felt based on my description that it needed to be fired at 1.25 gph to produce steam much faster given the size of the boiler, but he did not turn on the burner to see the fire.

The boiler is feeding ~428sq ft of EDR.

From a cold start, how long does it take you to produce steam and then how long is it taking to get to your radiators? What size radiation are you feeding? I am still unsure of how long I should expect the oil to burn away before the boiler starts making steam.

I think the most amazing learning experience from this process is that I haven't once found two experts that agreed on the same solution to a problem

Thanks again for all of your help.

lucky me

My wonderful 1960's vintage Waltham beast and the 3KA were installed in 1979-1980. I definitely want to get a WM SGO, but need to get some money first

The smoke pipe comes from the center top.

Interval meter

Steve:

You can use an old mechanical alarm clock connected to the power feed to the burner ignitor or fuel pump. If you're not experienced with wiring, have someone else do it. There is often a lot of wiring in a tight utlity box and you don't want problems.