The existing furnace is a natural gas furnace and I need a rough estimate to replace it. 1200 sq. ft cape cod home. zoned for 3 levels with one pump. I live in dupage county IL. The little research I did I found out I may need 130,000 btu furnace load. Recently we put in a new pump. One pump for the 3 levels of the house. The zones are controlled by closing down how much water to each level with valves by hand. Our bills in the winter have gone to 250 to 300. So we need to get that down a bit. Anybody out there had to have a similar job done? I don't want to get ripped off.
Since the efficiency is the driving force you would be looking at a condensing type boiler. These are different than the old cast iron boilers that had some mass and water content. The condensing type boilers need good water movement through the heat exchanger and a primary loop installed. You would also need to have each zone controlled by a pump. So there would be some piping changes involved. The vent pipe would also need to be changed. Prices would vary with the specifics of your system so a job visit would be required to give a good estimate. Just roughly you could figure $5000 for a boiler, $2000 for piping changes and $2000 for labor.
