New Boiler (OIl - help?)

[dusty_]

Hey guys. I'm not sure if this question fits into this category. If not could someone please direct me? I have to get a new oil burner (Ontario, Canada) and I had the furnace company give a quote. They recommend a BROCK BBC-3 100,000 BTU to heat my 2200 square foot home (not including 1000 sq ft basement). A couple of the settings from the flyer for this model are as follows:

IBR burner Oil capacity input 0.70 G.P.H., 98 M.B.H. I'm not sure what these are exactly but I just want to be sure I'm getting something that will heat my home properly. Can anyone give me some guidance or pointers? Thanks so much for your time.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Not sure I can help dusty but .7 gallons per hour sounds a bit costly. I guess it will depend upon how often the thing turns on.

 

[MasterMech]

Dusty, what kind of heating system do you have, baseboard (what type, fin and tube or radiant emmitters), radiant in-floor, cast-iron radiators... etc. Is your DHW heated via the boiler or is is a stand-alone unit? How well insulated is your home? Any big windows?

Being in Canada, I would think 100,000 BTU's is a bit light for 3000sq ft.

FWIW: I have a 150,000 btu unit heating a 1260sq ft ranch and providing my DHW. Which it does with extreme ease.

 

[dusty_]

Thanks for the reply MasterMech. Sorry I'm not up to par with the terminology but I'm assuming I have radiant emmiters. They are copper pipe baseboard heaters that run along the bottom of the walls (2 in each room). The boiler does heat the water for the radiant emmitters on it's own channel. We have 3 thermostats for 3 zones (1 for each floor).

The home was built in 1976 and was built to code from that time. We have a lot of windows and they are made by Dashwood from 1976 and were considered good at the time. However, we find they let in a lot of cold air during our winters up here that can go down to -35 c and we have to cover them with plastic to keep out the cold. We're replacing them gradually as money permits.

I want to be sure I have the proper size boiler for the house to be energy efficient. I heard from someone that if your set up is too large it could end up costing you more money in oil - or is that untrue and is it the other way around?

Thanks so much for your time and knowledge. Much appreciated.

Dusty, what kind of heating system do you have, baseboard (what type, fin and tube or radiant emmitters), radiant in-floor, cast-iron radiators... etc. Is your DHW heated via the boiler or is is a stand-alone unit? How well insulated is your home? Any big windows?

Being in Canada, I would think 100,000 BTU's is a bit light for 3000sq ft.

FWIW: I have a 150,000 btu unit heating a 1260sq ft ranch and providing my DHW. Which it does with extreme ease.

 

[dusty_]

Thanks for the insight here. This is all very new to me and I appreciate all the tips. It's all very helpful.

Not sure I can help dusty but .7 gallons per hour sounds a bit costly. I guess it will depend upon how often the thing turns on.

 

[MasterMech]

Dusty, I'm going to get a mod to look at this thread and maybe relocate it to where it will get some more attention. We have some heating experts on this forum but I guees they don't frequent The Gear section.

 

[BoilerMan]

Dusty, you need more info to know if this is good or not. There is software that can be used to determine the heatloss for your house. A good heating contractor will do this as part of his estimate! You need to plug in the numbers of your house, like square footage of windows, insulation R values of walls and ceilings, air infiltration estimates, etc. etc. He should be useing his tape measure and writing down alot of numbers.

Basically you get and educated "guess" of how much heat your house looses on the coldest days of winter, and the heating system is matched to that loss. No more, no less. Most people have grossly oversized heating systems MasterMech's for example. Oversized units turn on and off very often, this is called short cycleing and leads to inefficient use of fuel (oil) .7 gph (gallons per hour) is 143,000 X 0.7 = 100,000 btu x 85% combustion efficiency is 85,000 btu's delivered to your house in a perfect world. I have no way of telling you if that is enough or too little without knowing more about your house. What you describe is baseboard heat (the most common) BTW.
Hope this makes cents

TS

 

[MasterMech]

One reason I'm in this wood burning game is my boiler setup is less than perfect. The PO of this house liked the overkill approach and claimed the house was so "Energy Efficient you only need to fill the oil tank twice a year!" Well, that's true if you're only burning oil but he forgets that the house has two 275 gallon tanks, so the boiler chews through over 1000 gallons of oil every year (without burning wood). At current prices around here that's nearly $4K a year to heat my little 1260sq ft ranch. Yikes.

Energy efficient my foot, the house has fin and tube elements in the return lines for the base boardheat. Those elements are located in the crawlspace (which is insulated but dirt floor) hanging just under the floor josts. I've never seen that before.

 

[BoilerMan]

I've seen that a few times usually due to frozen pipes under there at one time or another. "Ah what the heck, we'll just put some heat down there........ it'll warn the floor too......won't cost any more since it's on the return"......RIGHT, like that A/C compressor under the hood doesn't cost any more to run since the clutch spins all the time anyway, RIGHT. Oh a truck with a 350 gets better mileage that the one with a 4.3 because the 350 doesn't have to work so hard..... RIGHT, some people still think batteries go dead if you put them on a concrete floor.... RIGHT. Sorry about the rant, I'm an ASE master, amoung other things.

TS

 

[dusty_]

Thanks again for all the responses. It's such a big investment to make when I have so little knowledge on the subject. Having you guys send me your input is really great! Anything else you can throw my way is very welcomed!!

Dusty, you need more info to know if this is good or not. There is software that can be used to determine the heatloss for your house. A good heating contractor will do this as part of his estimate! You need to plug in the numbers of your house, like square footage of windows, insulation R values of walls and ceilings, air infiltration estimates, etc. etc. He should be useing his tape measure and writing down alot of numbers.

Basically you get and educated "guess" of how much heat your house looses on the coldest days of winter, and the heating system is matched to that loss. No more, no less. Most people have grossly oversized heating systems MasterMech's for example. Oversized units turn on and off very often, this is called short cycleing and leads to inefficient use of fuel (oil) .7 gph (gallons per hour) is 143,000 X 0.7 = 100,000 btu x 85% combustion efficiency is 85,000 btu's delivered to your house in a perfect world. I have no way of telling you if that is enough or too little without knowing more about your house. What you describe is baseboard heat (the most common) BTW.
Hope this makes cents

TS