Help finding knowledgeable contractor in MA?

[Dana]

"Investment", spelled with an "A", as in "ROA"?

Is that down-east Maine dialect, or something?

Badger-Morgan: There's really no argument for sticking with oil. Twenty minutes from now the EPA might require soot scrubbers on oil-burners in urban areas as a public health measure or maybe all hydrocarbons will be taxed for the CO2 emissions, in which case a carbon tax would make it even less attractive relative to natural gas. I really don't forsee heating oil hitting price parity with gas for any length of time (no matter how fast the Persians or Canuckistanis can produce it), and the local emissions issues and higher burner maintenance makes it a PITA even if it did.

At the current price of oil the Canadians can still make money on already developed oil sand projects, but it won't pay for the infrastructure cost of developing more oil sand processing. Canadian production rates cannot/will not increase until there's a stronger price signal, which will only happen if the world demand catches up, and the price starts rising. That could take a good while if Iranian oil is allowed to be traded on the world market. If it's longer than 3 years the shale oil boomlet will have faded to a trickle, since only the very best shale oil can still break even on the development costs at $60/bbl (today's price.) My in-laws are considering leaving Calgary if the oil prices don't pick up by the end of this year.

If you're on the gas grid, go with it, unless the air-conditioning aspect of high efficiency air source heat pumps makes it a compelling alternative. At recent winter gas & electricity prices in the Boston area heating with a better-class mini-split is more expensive than 85% efficiency gas, but substantially cheaper than oil. But that was after a ~25-30% rate hike for electricity. Prior to then a better-class mini-split was at rough parity with condensing gas.

 

[BadgerBoilerMN]

Music to my ears.

I really appreciate knowing the inside track of oil and gas speculation. Puts things in perspective. Each market is different, as you so often and impressively point out. I started pushing condensing boilers 10 years after the first oil crisis. With age comes timing.
So; go gas, go BOOM...

 

[Sponsor]

 

[carthesen]

Future oil and gas pricing aside, additional weighing factors were switching to a gas stove and making space in the basement for my husband's woodshop (op is a she ) - getting the oil tank out and reducing boiler size matters. Based on Dana's analysis (thank you!) I spent a good amount of time checking on boilers today - landed at the Lochinvar Knight 50 or Cadet 40 and found a guy who primarily (exclusively?) installs Lochinvar. TT Prestige Solo 60 also sounds good, but I guess too big for us?

To answer some of your questions - Nat Grid charged us $1300 for the gas line install. Definitely heavily subsidized, we had a full work crew and heavy machinery at the house for nearly 12 hours. Quotes on the 100+ mbtuh boiler and indirect dhw have ranged from $13-18k, we'll see where that goes with a smaller boiler.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

It will be about the same regardless of the size of the boiler. So, like I said from the start, you are going to spend 13 to 18 grand, plus the money spent bringing gas to the home. You will never see a return on that investment. You will pick up a bit of space though.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Dana, a whole lot of bad information in your post. First off, oil burns as clean as gas does in modern equipment and doesn't require any more or any less maintenance than gas equipment does. However, that said, condensing gas equipment and it's components are very expensive to maintain should something go wrong. The equipment is much more complicated and prone to problems. All condensing equipment requires some way to dispose safely of the acidic condensate. Badger days it should last 20 years. Emphasis on should. Most of it will not and anyone installing it in the past twenty years knows that. The supply houses are filled with gas boiler and furnaces that crapped out under warranty. Add to that the difficulty in getting parts for this equipment after it's ten years old or so. Anyone here install Lennox? LOL. Anyway, you read her post. 13 to 18 grand plus. You explain how that investment is ever going to pay for itself. And don't forget to add in depreciation lol

 

[Dana]

There's an argument that mod-con burners are as high-maintenance as oil burners, not so much with mid-efficiency gas fired cast iron.

Heating oil exhaust has ~50% more carbon output per BTU than natural gas, far more sulfur, and over 100x as much PM 2.5 as gas exhaust (one reference among many). The smallest-jet oil burners are more prone to clogging and going off-mixture than the big bore behemoths, which makes them higher maintenance. Were this house to take an oil burner even the smallest available equipment is ridiculously oversized, but would also have that maintenance issue. To get a consistent clean burn out of the tiny-nozzle oil buners requires a higher quality fuel than is generally available in the US. (The Europeans have tighter fuel quality standards for heating oil, and can use smaller burners.)

There are plenty of reasons to retire an oversized but still functional boiler that's old enough to qualify for Social Security. But sure, net present value of future energy cost savings over the near term isn't necessarily one of them.

The more relevant comparison is the cost delta between a new oil boiler and a new gas boiler. A new direct-vented cast-iron gas boiler would probably be cheaper (even with the $1300 hook up fee) than a new oil boiler due to the avoided cost of the flue liner. It too would be oversized for the loads, but not the radiation, and it would be lower maintenance to boot. The economics of mod cons is another story, but there is at least some subsidy support in MA. It wouldn't surprise me if an HTP Versa wouldn't sometimes come in cheaper than a small mod-con + indirect, but it would still be more than a direct-vented Burnham ESC-3 + indirect.

A tiny cast-iron boiler with heat purge controls will hit pretty close to it's AFUE test numbers despite being nearly 3x oversized for the load, so then it becomes a matter of the cost delta between a mod-con that uses 10-12% less fuel than the cast iron gas burner, and whether that has an economic rationale over the anticipated lifecycle of the equipment. I'm thinking at $1.25/therm it probably doesn't have that rationale, but at $2.50/therm it probably does. But it's worth getting quotes.

The quotes are for more than just a boiler-swap, assuming the reconfigured & new radiation in the kitchen were included, and not quoted separately. The radiation changes would still be happening as part of the remodel even if they were to retain the gray-haired original boiler, nursing it along until it leaked.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Little back peddling there lol but, most of your entire first paragraph is wrong and base on out dated information. Oil is plenty clean these days, small nozzles haven't been a problem (mobile homes have been firing @ .50 for decades). The sulfur content is minimal these days and all new equipment will operate at zero smoke, so you need better information than you have there.

You have mentioned flue liners twice. What makes you think they don't already have a lined chimney? Besides that though, there are several oil fired boilers that can be direct vented just like gas equipment. I've been direct venting system 2000's for over twenty five years now with zero issues.

Where are you getting new radiation in the kitchen from, I don't see that in the op's posts. So we're back to trying to pay off a thirteen thousand dollar investment. I can put a Biase in there with modulating controls and direct vent for well under ten G's, probably a system 2000 too.

So.....how many years to make up that five thousand dollar plus difference?

 

[Dana]

It's the original 1950s boiler which were usually set up for terra cotta flue liners liners, and she mentioned 78% efficiency, which may have been where the (probably retrofitted flame retention) burner was tuned to in order to avoid flue condensation issues with the original tile liner. Even if the thing was tuned for higher efficiency and a retrofit stainless liner is installed, the original "behemoth" boiler is probably more than 5x oversized for the load, and the liner would not be right-sized for more appropriately sized boiler.

Could be rong, but those are the assumptions driving a presumption of a stainless liner requirement for a retrofit right-sized oil boiler.

The original post mentioned needing the wall space currently used by baseboard being needed for other purposes, and a toe-kick heater as one of the proposed replacements for that section of baseboard. (BadgerBoilerMN then suggested radiant floor rather than toe-kick, since it's all part of a bigger remodel.)

The emissions test data in the referenced document was from 2009, showing the emissions of both standard heating oil fuels as well as a low-sulfur heating oil fuel, comparing them to natural gas (both condensing and non-condensing) as well as wood pellet burners. The fuels have improved that much since 2009, have they?

The $13K quote was for a mod con 4-5x oversized for the load, and probably included the radiation changes. That is not for a comparable-sized cast iron gas-burner that is almost surely going to be less expensive (but comparable) than a replacement oil burner, that would save a few hundred per year over oil even at this year's low oil price, and probably several hundred per year at near-future oil & gas pricing, with lower overall maintenance cost to boot.

BTW: It's Biasi, not Biase, just as it's investment, not anvestment. Is there some aversion to the vowel "i" going on here?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

iPads make their own grammar rules, spelling too

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Nah, there's virtually no difference in boiler costs until you get into the really big stuff. A couple hundred dollars at best. And yes, fuel has improved that much, sulfur content has been significantly reduced and most will have at least 10% bio or more mixed. I can get 0 smoke from all modern oil burning equipment and co2 readings of 13%.

 

[John Molyneux]

Thought I'd weigh in on this because, while I depend on you guys to help me with heat-loss and boiler questions I actually know quite a bit about natural gas markets because I'm in the power generation industry. We burn a lot of gas.

There is just a phenomenal amount of gas coming out of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the northeast, both "wet" and "dry" gas (Wet gas has the propane, butane, etc. fractions). Even with depressed gas prices because of oversupply, shale gas production is increasing dramatically. The only way to get rid of it and keep the market somewhat in balance is via exports and dumping as much as we can into storage. The U.S. is a net exporter of gas, currently sending a huge amount of gas to Mexico and Canada and with upcoming opportunities to export shale gas to overseas markets via LNG. This year we expect to see an all-time record of over 4 TCF (trillion cubic feet) injected into storage in advance of next winter. We're pretty confident this is a long-term deal. In our view, it doesn't really make a bit of difference (to the gas market, anyway) whether politicians in New York allow fracking or not. Overall, the shale gas revolution may turn out to be one of the biggest economic development drivers in U.S. history, both because of the value of production and the value to the economy of having lower costs for heating and electric power.

The backbone interstate pipeline infrastructure that serves the northeast was built to ship gas up from the Gulf Coast. Many of those mainlines have now reversed. The problem we have in the northeast, particularly in New England, is that we've outgrown the existing interstate pipelines that serve our region. We're only 300 miles or so away from one of the most robust gas production regions in the world but we see some of the highest gas prices in the world during peak winter periods when heating load is competing with power generation load. However, most of the year wholesale gas prices prices are extremely low. For example, this spring we've been seeing spot gas prices in the low $2.00/MMBtu range, and lots of new pipeline projects are being developed that will help alleviate the winter season constraints. We've also seen world LNG prices collapse, following oil but largely due to huge amounts of new LNG liquefaction capability that is coming on line. So we expect to see continued downward pressure on gas prices for the foreseeable future.

We finally have gas coming into our neighborhood! I've been paying $2.69/gallon for propane ($29.45/MMBtu). The current PUC-approved tariff for my new natural gas service will be $1.32/therm ($13.20/MMBtu) plus $20/month. An equivalent price for heating oil would be around 2.10/gallon. As of today, our local cash price for #2 home heating oil (Portland, Maine) is around $2.20/gallon, so it's pretty close, certainly not enough of a differential to make a compelling economic case to replace a decent existing oil-fired heating system. But it's a no-brainer compared with propane. It's hard to predict future oil prices but oil is pouring out of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota (lowest unemployment rate in the nation) and Canadian tar sands. In fact, some of the Canadian pipelines that used to ship gas from Alberta east are going to be moving oil instead. I just wish we could get a lot of that oil off the railroads.

I like gas so I'd switch anyway, just to get an oil tank out of my basement if for no other reason. Then there are all those juicy rebates...I'll be getting $2,000 towards a 95% AFUE boiler and around $1,500 toward insulation/air sealing as part of the combined utility and Efficiency Maine incentives. Plus an extra $300 from the utility for signing up early and another $300 rebate from my installer because they're running an off-season web coupon. And I just sold my 20-year-old Weil McClain GV Gold for $400 on Craigslist, which also reduced the overall cost of the new boiler installation by $150 or so. My fuel bill would be cut in half just by switching from LP to natgas, I'll be reducing my heat load by at least 10-15%, and thanks to yall's help I'll have an almost perfectly-spec'd heating system that will modulate and condense like it's supposed to. And it'll be fun to play around with.

Sorry about the long read.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I know a lot of the guys posting here are in love with natural gas, and yes, it is less expensive than oil but you still have to run those savings costs down the road. As you can see, the difference between 85% and 97% is only $ 113.00 a year

 

[Dana]

Tom: I'll agree than in a low-cost natural gas environment there isn't a very good financial argument for condensing gas over 85% mid-efficiency gas boilers. But there's a huge financial argument for gas over #2 oil as a heating fuel at an code-legal efficiency when wholesale gas is trading between $2-4/MMBTU and crude oil is trading between $40-120/BBL. The price volatility alone is sufficient reason to avoid oil when you have other options. I doesn't take many years of $4/gallon retail oil to "pay off" in a retail gas market of $1-1.50/therm.

John: I'm not convinced that solving the ~50 hours per year of pipeline capacity constraint has a good rationale for rate-basing a major pipeline infrastructure project, at any wholesale price of natural gas. The economics of local storage (sited where it's actually needed) and doubling down (quadrulping down?) on demand response & PACE programs in a more serious fashion seems like a better expenditure of ratepayer money. (I guess we're going to find out if the Supremes understand FERC order 745 any better than the D.C. District court did.) The notion that energy use will resume expansion at prior decades' rates any time soon seems speculative at best, and contrary to the recent decade's record. The economics of building major New England pipeline infrastructure to enable LNG export from the Marcellus & Utica shales is probably better than for the local gas markets, but the financial risk is rightly borne by the pipeline developers, not the New England ratepayers. Something akin to the regulatory shake-up currently under way in NY could render major pipeline expansions stranded assets in the not very long term- there is real risk to that investment.

Drilling rates in the Bakken shale have fallen of a cliff with the collapse in the oil price. While it's profitable to keep already drilled wells producing at a $40-60/bbl price point, it's not profitable to keep developing. Typical depletion rates of shale oil wells vary- the average is about 3 years, some are as short as 18 months, others can go for 5, but it's nothing like traditional oil biz. So while production can still be increasing in the very short term, it has about a 3 year window unless prices pick up. (My in-laws see this first hand, since they're in the exploration biz, which has pretty much pancaked.) The oil sands have a similar economic price point for developing new production, but a much longer depletion curve. So while the shale oil will start to disappear from the market fairly soon, the oil sand production will just flatten- it'll stop increasing rather than fall.