My boiler mate is using about 800 gallons of propane a year to heat water and the house. I have had it cleaned and serviced and still see no improvement in its usage. My home is about 1200 with new windows, siding and insulation. I recently purchased electric heaters to heat with, so I am only heating hot water for showers and such. There is only 3 of us in the house and the boiler mate is still using about 70 gallons a month just to heat hot water. Someone told me that we should be averaging about 15 gallons to heat the hot water. It is a Crown Gas fired hot water induced draft boiler with a bock boiler mate. I have hot water baseboard in the house. Please help the propane is outrageous. I am going to put an electric hot water tank in and heat with space heaters. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for reading this.
There's a few facts you left out that are critical to the equation here. Where do you live? and how many btu's is that boiler? The average hot water heater, which is 60,000btu's will use roughly 1-1/2 gallons of propane a day. But you are using a potable water loop in a boiler. So if that boiler is 120,000 btu's, then that's what your burning to heat your water! As far as your fuel consumption is concerned, if you were in southern Ontario Canada or the northern US I would say your consumption is pretty well right, again depending on the btu rating of that boiler. When was it serviced last? Are you sure there are no leaks in the system? Lastly...I wouldn't make too hasty a decision on changing to electricity from propane. There are not very many places I've seen where electricity is cheaper. Tell us what you pay for propane a gallon and how much your electricity is per KW hr and I can tell you which way is cheaper. I'm a salesman in the propane industry and I've got a calculator that compares oil, natural gas, propane and electricity pretty quickly...
a coal fired hot water boiler is the cheapest hea you will get . i have a stoker coal boiler i burn about 4 ton a year. it cost about 600,00 to heat house . that includes heating the hot water inthe summer..
If the return pipe is cold, it may be empty, so the system may need to be refilled. That would tally if the boiler is banging, it's heating fresh air most of the time, the banging is the water boiling, not good. It shouldnt get that hot. It sounds like a closed system, so there should be a filling loop, a way of getting water into the system. It may be a flexible braided hose and there may be a valve at both ends and guage not far away showing the pressure. When the system is cold or nearly cold, fill it up by opening both valves. There'll likely be air in the radiators too, so you will need to bleed them with a bleed key on a square head on each radiator. When you do this then the system pressure will go down, as the air goes out. You will need to replace this air with water to keep the pressure up as it is the pressure that pushes the air out. Best to check the pressure after each radiator check. When each radiator appears to be full and the pressure is set, you can press go again and get warm You cant have too much pressure it will spill out of the safety valve, but if that happens something is wrong. There should also be a springy lever that empties the excess. Normally the pressure is about 1 - 2 bar. By the way, the system fills direct from the mains, so to avoid contamination from the heating system, it's normally not connected permenantly, hence the braided hose. If you havent a clue, print this out and get someone with more aptitude to help. Its not rocket science but... Hope that helps
If you already had your boiler cleaned and tuned up and your home has new windows, siding and insulation; you might want to have some local expert to look through things and evaluate your home and heating system. This would help you make sure that there really are no leaks. It may be that the windows, insulation and siding have not been properly installed. There might also be other problem areas I your home. Regarding the boiler, a gas-fueled one could do you more good. Other than it is the cheapest to operate among all the other options, it also heats as fast as propane does.
