Boiler

Last weekend dad and George came over to Sue’s parents house to install a new boiler. They were suckered into kind enough to help with the big job. After doing my best to clear out the house of looky-lous they got to work. Zip, zip, zip the pipes were cut and the old one was ready to be pulled out. I got to help with this part. A short 10 hours and four trips to Lowes later the new one was fully installed and working as advertised.

The new one is quite the upgrade. Slightly larger both physically and output-wise, much more efficient, doesn’t spew out carbon monoxide and best of all it’s actually installed properly. They both agreed that the original one was very poorly installed. The exhaust ducts were not connected so there was a nice one inch gap letting the CO into the house. The electrical wiring and water pipes were also hooked in wrong. Go figure. It worked like that for at least 8 years, although, last year the heat got stuck on and the hot water was so hot you always had to use a lot of cold to temper it down to a reasonable temperature.

The new one has fixed all those problems. No more CO. No more heat “stuck on” for no reason. No more scalding hot water. No more running out of hot water in the shower. The real test will be how much better the heating bill is during the winter. I believe it’ll show a significant improvement, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for dad and George for all their help. It’s been a long time since either has installed a boiler, but despite being rusty and old :-) they still pulled it off. I had no doubts they would.


3 Responses to “Boiler”

  1. Gerry Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 10:30 am

    Wow, CO huh? Any detectors in the house? If not it may make a nice holiday present or something. We put one in when we moved in, I think it had something to do w/ our home owners insurance. Then when we got the pellet stove we had to install a second one so there was one on each floor, by permit. I’m surprised by how expensive they are. We ended up doing 1 battery operated and 1 electrical. That way if the battery runs out we have a plugin as a backup, and if the power goes out we have a batter as a backup.

  2. Shaun Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    CO detectors were not as common when they bought the place as they are now. So, they don’t have one yet. I plan to replace the existing smoke detector with a nice smoke/CO detector this weekend.

  3. Dad Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    Old,,, yes we are…
    Rusty,,, yes we are…
    But hey,, we came, we saw and it kicked our ass.
    We had fun though…:d