Economical Replacement of 30 Year Old Boiler
In Massachusetts it’s not often you’d get 30 years of reliable service from your gas boiler. So when a North Andover family faced the prospect of choosing a suitable replacement it was an easy call. They only wanted to replace the existing model with a similar one from the same manufacturer. Who can blame them?
At Absolute Precision Plumbing Heating & Cooling we install Burnham products over 90% of the time. That old boiler is a good example of the Burnham’s reliability. Nowadays we mostly recommend high efficiency systems but in this case the family’s circumstances were such that replacing an 81% efficient boiler with another 81% efficient boiler made sense.
More Than One Way to Get Payback From New Heating System
The family anticipates selling their house in about 3 years which wouldn’t give them quite enough time to recoup the investment in high efficiency. The new 81% efficient installation by Absolute Precision would, however, include some features which would make the new system more efficient, economical, and cleaner. They’d be able to enjoy some immediate energy savings along with more household comfort. And the new system would enhance the resale value of their home.
In the video Ken walks us through the details including Absolute Precision’s practice of installing individual zone pumps to dramatically improve system response. It’s more efficient because individual zones get hotter quicker so less energy is used each time heat is called for. The new boiler also has electronic ignition which, as opposed to a continuous pilot, produces a small amount of yearly savings.
HVAC Safety
Ken also points out in the video safety features of the new system. Absolute Precision’s installs are always up to code and in this case the low water cutoff would prevent a dry-fire and possible explosion in the event something let go resulting in the water draining out. The air makeup unit allows for a cleaner more efficient operation as it draws in outside air for combustion.
This North Andover family got exactly what they wanted at an affordable price. They were satisfied with the old system for 30 years and they along with future owners of this home will be satisfied for many years to come.
For more information about high efficiency heating or heating systems in general give Absolute Precision a call at 978-774-8835.
Or you can contact us here.
Video Transcript:
Good morning I’m Ken Roberts with Absolute Precision Plumbing Heating & Cooling and today we’re going to be here in North Andover changing out this older gas fired forced hot water boiler. It’s about thirty years old 81% efficient and what we’re going to be doing is replacing it with another Burnham 81% efficient chimney drafted boiler. A few things we’re going to be doing. Apparently they had zone valves so we’re going to be taking those out and putting in a pump that you saw which will help them to get heat much quicker and more efficiently and everything will be isolated back with the pump so that the system will be much more efficient to run that way.
The water heater that’s here now is currently a gas fired stand-alone water heater and that’s going to stay, we’re not going to touch that, usually we try to put in an indirect fired water heater but the people decided to stay with the lesser efficient and the gas water heater because they’re thinking maybe in three years their going to be selling the house and moving out of town so at that point they feel that there’s really no need to spend the money for putting in the higher efficiency system. But by putting in a Burnham even though it’s 81% efficient it’s a great boiler and it certainly adds some selling value to the house for the next prospective buyer.
So tune in
Hi I’m Ken Roberts with Absolute Precision Plumbing Heating & Cooling. We’re back here in North Andover for the completion of the job from the earlier part of the video where we showed you what we had here before vs. what we have here now.
Here we have the U.S. Boiler Burnham. It’s the 81% efficient system. Like I said this particular client feels that they may not be here in a few years so they didn’t want to spend the additional money for the high efficiency system. They were happy with the other one. They wanted to do the same system again. so this is a typical chimney vented boiler, atmospheric draft, with electronic ignition which adds a little bit of efficiency over the other one. The other system had a standing pilot, this one has electronic ignition so that adds up to maybe 10-20 dollars a year of gas consumption that won’t be used this year from this point forward whereas the other system did.
We’ve got a separate pump here for each zone. Before they used to have zone valves as I showed you and with these pumps here this system now will get hot much quicker, more efficient and that contributes to saving money.
Everything’s valved off, everything’s tagged so if there’s a system failure in one of these loops you can isolate it by shutting off the feed and return. The returns are all isolated and valved so if anybody has to come out here and service it they can isolate that one particular loop so if there’s a problem they’ll still have heat and hot water.
Over here we’ve got the low water cutoff. This is a new feature that’s being required now by Massachusetts law. You have to have a low water cutoff device and what that does is it’s a safety feature so if for some reason something lets go and the water drains out of the boiler the boiler won’t dry-fire and have a potential explosion issue. Back here we have an air makeup unit which the other system didn’t have because at the time when they had that system put in the law did not require air makeup for combustion as stringent as it is now. So what this does is it takes outside air in and every time there’s a call for heat the system basically sucks outside air in for combustion so that will help the boiler to run quite a bit more clean, a little bit more efficient.
So this client in North Andover will now see some good results and have a system that works more efficient, more economical. It’s a great Burnham product and that’s primarily all we use. So if you know anyone that wants to have an efficient system like this put in have them give us a call at Absolute Precision. Thank you.
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