My oil company is offering a new system, the "System 2000"
If your income falls within there guideline and your system is over 20 years old it qualifies for a "oil heat efficiency program rebate".
Bacically they will put in a new system for about $7,000, and I would qualify for about $3,000 in rebates and another $300 thru my town/state (Massachusetts) for doing this.
Right now I have a Weil-Mcclain system that's is working find...but in the future I don't know.
You can also qualify for a zero interest loan for 7 years.
Have anybody heard of this "System 2000" or this program???
Is this a no-brainer???
Thanks
Barry
The system 2K has been around awhile, and it's an intelligently designed system that runs far more efficiently than typical oil-boilers under part-load conditions. That doesn't mean you can oversize it though. Most oil-fired boilers in MA are 3x+ oversized for the peak-loads (in my limited experience, in 01609 anyway), and running well below their AFUE ratings. A 3x oversized System 2000 won't be as crummy as a 3x oversized Weil McLain (unless it has a buffer tank and some smart controls), but a RIGHT SIZED System 2000 will probably cut the fuel bill by a third.
To figure out if/how-far oversized your current boiler is, try this downloadable tool that uses a boiler-performance regression curve and local weather data & fuel use to work backwards to a whole-house heat load:
http://nora-oilheat.org/site20/fsa/FSACalculator_1_1_0_8.zip
It's not perfect, crashes sometimes, but it's results can be remarkably close to reality. You may have to fudge the location to a city with a climate most-similar to yours (what's your zip?).
To see how a System 2K stacks up against other boilers in an oversized situation as-measured by the folks at Brookhaven Nat'l Labs, see:
http://www.nora-oilheat.org/site20/uploads/FullReportBrookhavenEfficiencyTest.pdf
(System #3 in the test was a System 2000).
This might indeed be an investment no-brainer, if the installers did the math and right-size it for the application. How many years would it take to pay down a $4K investment with a 30-35% reduction in fuel use at current prices? If less than 5 in simple terms, it's a complete no-brainer. If it's more than a decade, and your Weil McLain has a decade or three left in it, maybe not- depends on what the price of oil does over the next decade. It could still be a good investment, but it may take a sharper pencil to determine where it goes present-value positive.
If you have a natural gas main on your street, a better investment might be to switch fuels. The medium & long term prospects for oil don't look very rosy price-wise (more diesel cars fighting for that same fractional barrel, and developing world demand driving up the price of crude), where as the as-yet minimally exploited Allegheny shale gas is poised to keep natural gas prices low in the NE for some time to come. (At current prices residiential retail NG in 01609 are the BTU equivalent of ~ $1.35/gallon oil.)