I currently have a 10 year old boiler for an older home that is running fine and gets an annual cleaning every year. The home has had upgrades like a new roof, new windows, added insulation, and new fiberglass doors over the years and I am trying to decide if I should save and wait for next year to upgrade the boiler or if I should just drop the money on a new pellet stove for the ground floor. PS - I currently have a pellet stove in the basement and it works great.
I would try to figure what the cost is for operating the boiler each year, include the annual cleaning in the operating costs. Then figure the cost to buy and operate the pellet stove instead. Take the cost of purchasing the pellet stove and divide it by how long it is expected to last before it needs to be replaced. Add that number to the annual cost of pellets and cleaning or whatever maintenance the pellet stove requires each year. Then compare the annual cost of operating the boiler, which is paid off already for the purposes of this analysis, and the cost to operate the pellet stove, including the amortized cost to buy and install it. Since you said the boiler is running fine, I assume you expect the pellet stove to be cheaper to operate each year. how long have pellets been available? Are the sales of pellet stoves increasing, decreasing or staying about flat each year? If sales are decreasing, you may find pellets go up in price, since there are fewer people to share the overhead of making pellets at all. You get the idea, you need to figure out how fast you start to save money with the pellets and how risky the money saving proposition is at all. Then add a third option, which is a new boiler that is presumably more efficient? Do the amortization of the purchase price, including installation, the same way you did the pellet stove to get an annual cost figure to compare to the other two. If the 10 year old boiler is near the end of its useful life, then you can disregard the first option, just keeping it and running it til it drops.
10 yr old boiler is just a baby. maybe at 20 yrs you might be asking this question.
