I can install my own new system if I wanted one, but I chose to make upgrades.

It's impossible to judge someone else's situation from afar, but that's what I did.

what upgrades did u do... furnace works fine otherwise... just looking for ways to make more efficient.... the pilot on the thing is huge... but have had a few places tell me I should keep the flame pilot because it is less costly to replace, but other guy told me it's like running 30 gas pilot stoves at one time... and does cost of upgrading pay off

I have oil. A new burner took my firing efficiency from 75% to 84%. The unit was properly sized for the house.

My goal is to see boilers sold, but I can't, in good conscience, tell someone to replace a functioning unit. Not unless I can prove that there would be great savings by switching, and a short payback period.

i guess thats my concern... I was told i could do the improvements suggested to my boiler including switching to spark ignition, and adding a damper to my unit for about $500.00 including labor.... new unit with labor is about 4,000.00. even if I spent a thousand but felt comfortable that unit should last me awhile I would be ok with it...

my unit is a hot water with a combination of baseboard units and radiators...

I can only give my opinion about replacing the boiler issue. I don't work with gas equipment, but I know that there is a few percentage points in fuel use with a pilot light vs. an ignitor.

With oil, I know of more options.

Here's the deal:

Your 30 year old boiler is probably about 70% efficient. Eliminating the pilot light would give you a small reduction in cost, although you can make most of those savings up by turning the pilot off in the spring and relighting it yourself in the fall.

Your boiler is probably atmospherically vented, which means that it simply relies on the combustion gasses being hot to cause them to go up the chimney and outside. Take too much heat out of the combustion gasses and it wont vent or the gasses will condense into water in the chimney and damage it.

The second stage of efficiency uses an electric motor to force the combustion gasses through the boiler. That means that more heat can be removed, boosting the efficincy of such boilers to around 80%. Take more heat out and again the steam in the combustion gasses will condense.

The third level of efficiency is a condensing boiler. These boilers are DESIGNED to allow the combustion gasses to condense in the boiler. The liquid condensate is then drained away and disposed of into a drain.

The advantage of these boilers is two fold:

1) It allows the comstion gasses to be cooled off a lot. Rather than 400 degree gasses with an 80% boiler, the gasses are cooled to around 120 dgrees and usually vented using PVC plastic pipe

2) Just as it takes a lot of heat to boil water into steam, you gain heat energy if you condense steam into water. A condensing boiler may produce 1-2 gallons of condensate per hour of continuous operation, and the additional heat you gain is the heat it would take to boil that liquid

So the savings amount to adding together the additional heat extracted by further cooling the combustion gasses plus the heat gained by condensing the steam into water.

This typically gives real efficiencies of 90-92% or so.

So by replacing you existing boiler with a condensing boiler, you could expect to increase the efficiency from 65-70% to 90-92%, or an improvement of about 1/3.

To get that improvement you have to buy and install a new boiler, and you have a more complex system to maintain.

The short answer is that there is a reasonable argument for upgrading, especially if you expect high fuel prices to continue indefinitely.

The other thing that seems wrong is that your existing boiler is way too big. 260,000 BTU for 3000 sq ft is huge. My (1890 farmhouse with 1964 addition) house is 2600 sq ft and I have a heat loss at -4 of 68,000 BTU.

When boilers are that oversized, they are very inefficient.

If this is the case, replacement is the best course of action. As the previous poster mentioned, a mod/con boiler will save you lots of money.

The other thing to look at is the control system. Are there individual thermostats in each unit? Some occupants will crank the heat way up. Is there one main thermostat somewhere - this leads to some units overheating, forcing the occupants to open windows to cool down.

The best was is either individual thermostats with range stops (can set upper limit of 74 or so) or remote sensored thermostats - the thermostat is down in the mechanical room with a remote sensor up in the unit to measure temperature. This way only you can change the temperature.

It may require some piping changes, but it will pay off in the long run.

Michael

Thank You very much for the advice, I will look into a new unit this spring using this information as I think right now, being the dead of winter, they will rake me thru the coals...
also, I do have to look into the heat loss thing, cause a local supply company did a calculation for me and said I needed about 240 input, but he used my total linear footage of copper piping in baseboard heaters and over all size of the few radiators I have to base his calculation, not heat loss but area water had to pushed thru, but I have been doing some reading and my understanding is that this formula would be more applicable to steam heat... not water. and the calculators i have seen online are a bit technical. My building is brick, my windows (28) are top of the line windows, my building is 25x60 with 9.5 ft ceilings, attic
is well insulated...need to get this figured out so I can size my unit correctly

also... any recommendations on what units (companies) I should consider... just want something reliable doesn't need to be top of line... just good buy & dependable