Boiler

This is not your typical home-improvement project!

Before this project, the house had oil-fired forced hot air heating, and an incredibly expensive 80 gallon electric water heater. Long ago, I had wanted to ditch that water heater in favor of anything else. We have no gas line to the house and I didn't want propane tanks in my yard, so the easy, inexpensive solution was out. Those of you who are thinking solar right now have arrived at the wrong site. Direct-fired oil is possible, but I've heard that the lifespan is short on those. It turns out, however, that you can effectively heat your hot water indirectly and quietly if you have an adequately sized boiler. Knowing this, and the fact that the basement was going to be tough to zone heat with the forced hot air system, I plumbed in radiant baseboard heating when I put up the walls in anticipation of putting in a boiler eventually.

Eventually came when we started watching movies in the new home theater in the spring of 2001. It was so cold that we decided we had to do something about it, and paying $7,000 to have it done was out of the question.

	Many thanks to Joe for lending me the indestructible trunk and the rest of the neighborhood for helping me get this 500 lb. boiler home and into the basement.
	Joe's plan of sliding the boiler on its skid down planks and sliders down the stairs worked flawlessly. Here we see that indeed the strap and come-along didn't break...
	...And so Craig didn't get crushed...
	...And the boiler was safely placed in its new home.
	This is an "indirect" water heater. Unlike the 80 gallon electric unit that this replaces (in the background), this 42 gallon heater works by using the oil-fired boiler hot water to heat the domestic hot water. This approach makes for a much faster recovery and above all, cost less to run.
	The first pipe going in to what will become a forest of pipes.
	Here's where I had it after I fixed my leaks and before I turned it over to the experts at Jamie Oil for final hook up of the vent, oil burner, and oil supply line.