How can one find out the age of such items? Its a Weil-McClaine boiler and I think the model no is E 5 or 6. I see the tag but its in a difficult position to be able to unscrew the 2 screws to get a better reading. I think it was said that a boiler life time should be around
30 years. I think this unit is closer to 40 years already.
Why do you want to know, it might be only 70% effecient, todays minimums are about 82% and you can go to 96.7% if you are smart. If its that old and you live where heat is a big cost, get a net one now and stop thinking about it. It will increase your homes value.
Not as smart as people think. From an ecological point of view, saving oil is a good thing. As a fiscal investment, for me to upgrade the boiler the payback is about 12 years. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade.
True, but as I see it, the value can be arrived upon the sale of the home as an incentive..so either way it would 'increase' the sale of the home. Pushing 80, 12 years to cash in on its payback is non descriptive. With the latest fiasco on todays market, who knows how long it would take to sell, and should I so call benefit while living there? Interesting, no one as yet has answered the gist of my op....how does one find the age of such boilers?
The installer probably wrote the date on the instruction manual.
Some industrial/commercial boilers will have the date on the nameplate. Other than that, not much you can do. The manufacturere can give you a time period that particular model was made, but it can easily span 20+ years.
Ed, Wouldnt it be an investent if oil continues to go up as it has. What about unforseen repairs on an old unit. What about overall efficency, I think its called Energy Factor. I would think you might have a payback in 6-8 years if present trends continue, there is no reason they wont as things are going now. What is the true operating efficency of an old unit, they take much longer to heat up to Steady State efficency. They have alot more metal in the exchangers to heat up. It might be near 80% when hot but getting there is the issue. An example is my 1,000,000 btu Kiwanee NG steam boiler is 80% Steady State efficency but if I replace it with a new 80% unit I might save
10-20% on NG since getting the Kiwanee to steam costs more than a new unit since it holds more water and is big. Run numbers with these 3 changes, Energy cost increases, True efficency or Energy Factor, and unforseen repairs. I think could cut your payback in half. Wouldnt that be an investment, or am I wrong.
Heh! Did they even HAVE instruction manuals forty years ago? If they did, I imagine it looked like:
"To turn on, move switch to "ON" position. To turn off, turn switch to "OFF" position."
Today, the manual would look like:
[snip 13 pages of warnings such as "Do not place head over flame" followed by:"To turn on, move switch to "ON" position. To turn off, turn switch to "OFF" position."
I just went through all of this analysis and got estimates to replace my 18 year old Burnham boiler with tankless coil water heating with a more efficient system, and decided to sit on my old boiler a while longer. Many factors, including the long payback (my boiler is fairly efficient), the main ones being:
I was having some burner issues, that got fixed, all is working well, decided to leave well enough alone.
It's a judgement call of course - like when and whether to trade in that 8 or 10 year old vehicle. It may hum away for many more car-payment-free years, or the tranny may break down tomorrow at the most inopportune time.
But it's not so obvious that we all should be running around replacing ever boiler.
Banty
A new boiler will save me about 120 gallons of oil a year. Having it installed will exceed $6500. Today I'm paying $3.09 so a gross savings of $370 a year at today's price. That comes out to over 17 years. Factoring is some price increases, it will come down some, thus the estimated 12 years.
Truth is, my boiler will probably have to be replaced or need major repairs in the next few years so the question is, when do I do the replacement? I just don't see the need to spend a lot of money today just for the potential savings. As always, the lingering question is when? Next summer at a leisurely pace? Or some bitter cold winter day when it dies? I can still buy a lot of repairs for the annual cost of the replacement equipment.
Someone mentioned it would increase the value of the home. Yes, it will, but not to the point of full payback. It is understood that a house will have a working heater when you buy it so an older original will have a slight knockdown, but will that be $2000 or $6500? I'd get a better return putting that money into the bathrooms or kitchen. Besides, I have no plans to move so I'm not using that in the decision making process.
Now, if the installer said I could pay it off in annual payments equal to
150 gallons of oil, I'd have a new boiler at no additional out of pocket. I'd take that.FWIW, I'm looking at having O2 trim installed on our boilers at work. Projected savings is 2%, but we spent $220,000 for gas last years.
EP What is 02 trim
Oxygen trim. It chances the fuel mixture for maximum combustion by regulating either the fuel or air input. There are sensors in the stack or breeching to read the CO and CO2 and make adjustments accordingly. We have two 125 HP boilers and to do both will be about $55,000.
We are considering it not so much to save money, but the EPS is regulating our emissions from our manufacturing process. With the O2 trim we can use the boilers as thermal oxidizers to reduce emissions.
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