Looking for a More Effiecient Boiler AA220

I am posting this question for my sister in law and nephew. They have a 1940's model coal o matic.boiler in there old farm house and it is very hungry on coal. 4 ton of coal last month total this year 9 ton and r heading to buy more. The tag on it says 156000 BTU'S. Would your aa220 be more efficient and save them on coal.

strez123 wrote:I am posting this question for my sister in law and nephew. They have a 1940's model coal o matic.boiler in there old farm house and it is very hungry on coal. 4 ton of coal last month total this year 9 ton and r heading to buy more. The tag on it says 156000 BTU'S. Would your aa220 be more efficient and save them on coal.

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I have a couple of questions.

What type of heat?, forced air, hot water, or steam?
When was the last time the boiler was serviced/cleaned and a manomometer reading taken?
The other question is what type of coal are they using??
Are they burning Bituminous?

If your relatives are like me, they have home that is poorly insulated and hard to heat.

Yes hot water. Cast iron radiators in all rooms except kitchen copper baseboard. They clean it monthly due to excessive fly ash build up in pipes. The unit burns rice coal anthracite. They have been doing upgrades on iinsulation and thought they would up grade the boilerif it would save them on coal useage. They live just outside of berwick pa and thought about looking at liesureline. The boiler coal o matic. was made in trucksville pa cannot find out much information about that company and what was there efficiency.

Little chance that the old boiler is as efficient as a new one would be. How much more efficient would be hard to calculate, however, until the new one is up and running. If they're thinking of upgrading, that probably means they should. LL would be a good choice.

AFAIK the heat exchanger of that 220 boiler is an old AA design. Unless you know it has a larger heat exchange surface, etc., than the current boiler, I don't think there's any reason to assume the efficiency would be very much different (at least at equivalent firing rates). I would also suggest being very careful with the way the 156k rating is used. Many of those old boilers were rated on the basis of net output (after allowance for a substantial pickup factor). For example, if the assumed pickup factor was 1.33 and the boiler was 80% efficient, 156k btu/hr of net output would translate to something like 260k btu/hr on the input basis that some of the newer boilers use.

Mike

Assuming the existing stoker/boiler is working as designed, I don't expect you would save much by simply swapping to a new unit. A simple check would be to put a BBQ thermometer in the flue pipe and see what the stack temperature is (before the baro).

Are they sure all the baffles are in place? Fire is properly adjusted?

The other question is...where is all the heat going?!