So... I bought yet another house that was abutting my other houses and I'm currently working on it and getting it ready to rent. I've already replaced the electric hot water heater with an oil fired hot water heater because it needed to be done and I only had oil and propane spares in the garage and no electric. As the house has an up to date oil tank and no propane the choice was easy. More "mo" and less "eenie meenie minie".
I just finished an assessment of the heating system and it's positives and negatives. The main positive is; functional, cleanly laid out duct work. The main negative is a 1973 oil furnace with more holes in it than I can readily describe. The one house I bought two years ago has an outdoor boiler that works well enough and is only about a 60 foot run to the new house. It's oversize for the application and initially that annoyed me but now I see it in a different light.
Here's what I was thinking... leave the current duct work in place, gut the low boy oil furnace cabinet of everything and just install a high efficiency variable speed blower and a water to air exchanger inside the existing furnace cabinet. In this scenario, the 105,000 BTU oil fired hot water heater can be used as back up. I was thinking just add a small 200 gallon water storage to supplement the 400 on the loop already (at the other house). After heat loss calcs for worst case Ontario winters the boiler is still a bit large but nothing like it was with only the one house. I can't add more storage, there is just no room and a little is better than none at all.
So my question to the community at large;
Do you foresee any problems with just gutting the oil furnace and replacing it with the above described?
Is there a reasonable control system that can take advantage of a variable speed high efficiency electric blower in conjunction with an HX?
This isn't my first heating mod, but it would be my first water to air and I'm not sure of all the details on the control side of things.
Cheers
I just finished an assessment of the heating system and it's positives and negatives. The main positive is; functional, cleanly laid out duct work. The main negative is a 1973 oil furnace with more holes in it than I can readily describe. The one house I bought two years ago has an outdoor boiler that works well enough and is only about a 60 foot run to the new house. It's oversize for the application and initially that annoyed me but now I see it in a different light.
Here's what I was thinking... leave the current duct work in place, gut the low boy oil furnace cabinet of everything and just install a high efficiency variable speed blower and a water to air exchanger inside the existing furnace cabinet. In this scenario, the 105,000 BTU oil fired hot water heater can be used as back up. I was thinking just add a small 200 gallon water storage to supplement the 400 on the loop already (at the other house). After heat loss calcs for worst case Ontario winters the boiler is still a bit large but nothing like it was with only the one house. I can't add more storage, there is just no room and a little is better than none at all.
So my question to the community at large;
Do you foresee any problems with just gutting the oil furnace and replacing it with the above described?
Is there a reasonable control system that can take advantage of a variable speed high efficiency electric blower in conjunction with an HX?
This isn't my first heating mod, but it would be my first water to air and I'm not sure of all the details on the control side of things.
Cheers
