a Story

When I moved into this house, it was almost 100 years old.  It had a steam heat system with the original cast iron radiators and fitted steel pipe.  It had a 'new' boiler installed some time in the 1960s (as far as we could tell).  The boiler used heating oil as a fuel,  and had a 'tankless' heat exchanger built in that provided hot water.  That meant, among other things, that our boiler had to remain on all Summer, even though we didn't need it to heat the house.  As soon as water in the water jacket inside the boiler dropped below a certain temperature, the oil burner would come on and bring the temperature up.   This would happen whenever we used hot water for more than just a moment.  But even when we weren't using any hot water, the temperature in the boiler would slowly drop, as it lost heat into the surrounding air in the basement, and up the chimney, via air convection.  When it dropped below a certain level, the oil burner would come on to bring the temperature back up.

I did my best to minimize our use of oil, as I explained in this video back then:

We could have installed an electric hot water tank, paid the increased electric bills, and shut the boiler off during the Summer and be done with it.

But around that time, we had an energy audit done and discovered that, when it came to heating the house, our heating system was about 35% efficient.  That meant that for every gallon of oil we burned that actually kept us warm, two more gallons were wasted by sending heat up the chimney, down into the ground (through the basement floor) or out through the walls.  With the price of oil rising rapidly at the time, we made a decision.  Replace the whole system!

(to be continued)