djblech said:
Thanks for all the info. And I thought this would be an easy decision. I have about a 20 yr old Weil/Mclain 105 btu boiler now. I thick it is about 70%-80% efficient. I am mostly heating with baseboard except the 2 zones I switched to CI radiators. I would like to rip all the baseboard out and install old CI radiators, but my wife isn't sold yet. Just thought with the $ of propane at almost 3$/gal a new boiler might help.
Doug
If your existing boiler is solid, and you're only looking at a fairly small incremental efficiency increase, it'll take an awfully long time to get a return on the investment. Definitely consider the maintenance/ repair factor, too: a friend of mine who is retired built a small "last" home with a Munchkin high-efficiency propane boiler. A very short time after it went off warranty, it quit putting out heat and began spewing error codes. He opened it up and discovered that the plastic housing on the centrifugal draft blower had cracked. The housing alone was not available as a part-- only some much larger assembly for which the part-only price was north of $400. Being handy and frugal, he used some adhesive to kludge it back together, and it continues to work, and he continues to keep an eye on it. Dread to think what that'd cost a 'regular owner' who had no choice but to have a service technician install the $400+ part. I'm not suggesting that's going to happen often, but it's an illustration of the downside of complex devices with make and model unique internal workings.
If you have places you can insulate or air-seal your house, that's far more likely to pay you back and do so quickly-- and it will make you more comfortable as well.