I am in the process of choosing a new fboiler for my 1000 foot home, built 1930. Current boiler is 39 yrs old and consumes a lot of oil. There are insulation improvements that need to be done too.
After reading up some more, I found that you need to insulate first in order to size your furnace properly. My problem is that while I definately plan to do that, I wanted to replace the furnace as soon as possible because of the amount of oil it is consuming and the possibility of it having problems getting through the winter. I have a number of projects including replacing back door, insulating floor joists in basement and putting on storm windows upstairs. It is unlikely that I will have the time or money to do all the insulating and improvements before I put the furnace in.
My question is whether it would be possible to properly size the furnace before all these are done, especially if my contractor is aware of the improvements I will be making. Also, not one of the 4 contractors that have given bids have crunched my info through a heat loss equation (that I'm aware of), although the last one crawled all through the house and looked at everything. I just want to replace the stupid thing before it quits and hopefully have oil bills lower than my mortgage payments. What should I do?
Thanks again.