Reply To: Updating our heating system

Hi twisted, thanks for all the good info.

I spoke to another plumber today, and he said that today’s energy efficient units should last as long as the standard units. I’m going to check on it further.

When I bought my house 25 years ago, I had two ancient systems, and the home inspector said they could last another 30 years, or go the next day.

A few weeks later, the first one went, and I replaced it with a state-of-the-art Weil-Mclain boiler. After 15 years that boiler, a standard boiler, started giving me problems, and now probably needs to be replaced.

The other boiler, the snowman, I updated the burner with a newer burner – that was a big win, and it hasn’t given me a bit of trouble.

It was a bit disappointing that the great Weil-Mclain boiler just didn’t stand the test of time that the older, unnamed coal burner did.

I’m now investigating the domestic hot water choices.

We’re not big users of heat or hot water, so it’s hard to make a purely economic justification for any replacement at all. We use about 400-500 gallons of oil / year in Massachusetts, and our domestic hot water bills are about $30/month with two teenagers.

Last year, we visited my sister in Israel and saw dual-flush toilets. I recently adapted our home toilets to be dual-flush, and that has been a big money-saver — I wrote about that in another thread, under HOUSEHOLD->Plumbing