Quote:
Originally Posted by raymr
I take it this is for a large building. Has anyone done a heat loss calculation on the building to make sure your boiler is sized properly?
There are gas burners that basically replace the oil unit. They are called power gas burners, and operate on the same air tube principle. As long as your Smith boiler is certified to run with gas, it shouldn't be a problem at all. But if the boiler is oversized it becomes inefficient.
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Roughly 40K sq.ft. of fairly inefficient (old woodframe single pane windows, wood overhead doors on the loading dock, no interior roof insulation-does have a layer of foam over the corrugated metal and under the rubber roof) warehouse. When we replaced the old boiler they did take everything into consideration (as far as we know) to determine the proper size.
I did manage to find the Smith website and they list the 28A as being Light Oil, Gas and Light Oil/Gas (uses one as backup?)capable. Would that make it a safe assumption that it might be as simple as a burner swap?
We're planning on addressing the inefficiencies we already know of (windows, doors and insulation) as well as the ones they discover during the energy audit. The windows on the south side of the building were replaced about 10 years ago with double pane vinyl, but that side isn't visible from the street. Street-side we might need to go with a storm window of some sort depending on what options the HD determines appropriate.