New England B.S. Thread

Mine is from 1986, which is the last year they made it. They apparently stopped parts production about 10 years after that. He told me for a lot of things, he could fabricate something that would work. He also said the burner itself is a Riello so it's easy to get parts for. Just an issue if something obscure goes with the boiler itself.

The last people just ran it and never even had it cleaned. He cleaned it really well, resealed some parts, changed a nozzle because he said the one on the burner was wrong, got it so he was happy with all the numbers.

He had a lot of praise for the unit itself. He said if I were to replace it, I'd need another Pensotti, a Buderus, or similar triple pass low mass boiler to be in the same league as far as quality and efficiency goes.

 

If I had ended up with the house I looked at with 20 acres, I'd definitely be burning wood. My parents had a big Fisher wood stove in the basement and would go through about 3 cord a year.

Where I am now, I'm just happy I have oil instead of Propane. People praise propane, but I don't think it's ever worked out better economically. There's less energy in a gallon of propane and it always seems to be more expensive than oil.

 

I have propane and oil in my house. Oil for the heat and hot water and propane for cooking and the dryer. I like the forced hot water baseboard heat but would swap that out for radiators in a heartbeat.

My parents have a wood stove with a blower box behind it and it does a good job keeping the place warm. The blower is key.

 

She had a pipe crack or something like that so she's been working on that for the last like week.

 

OUCH. That sucks. The "joys" of home ownership.

 

Mine is hot water baseboard oil for heat. I had an aqua booster off the boiler for hot water, but I tore it out and put in an electric. A tempering valve was shot on it and the tank was 40 years old and had signs of corrosion so I didn't want to keep running it. Oil hot water is probably great in the winter since you're running the boiler anyway, but it seemed like I was going to burn through a tank of oil in the summer just to heat water. My electric bill only went up about $25 with the electric hot water, so I think I came out ahead.

It'd be nice to have natural gas for everything, but I'm in a rural area so that's not an option.

I wish I had a propane stove. Mine's electric, as is the dryer. Glass cooktops are easy to clean, but cooking over a flame is so much nicer. I do have a propane fireplace insert in my office, so I'll probably fill the tank before winter so I can use it if I want to. It's just about out now.

 

Our last house was 1300 sq feet and we heated it with a harman p68 standalone. Was playing with different hardwood/softwood blends first few years but the last two years we were there; we burned okanagon golds and platinums. Lots of heat and very little ash.
Just cut a slice off some of the logs that I could get to:

 

I had a Quadrafire Castile standalone upstairs and an older Whitfield downstairs. The Whitfield could burn anything and not care. The Quadrafire was a little pickier. Probably because the Quad had a firepot that could fill up and the Whitfield burned over a grate that would drop ash directly into the pan.

 

Is all of this talk about stoves & heating because today is the longest day of the year and from here on out the days are getting shorter bringing on Winter?

 

Nah, I was/am trying to get rid of a stack of trees that were delivered for firewood before we bought our house.

 

When I bought my house, the stove and dryer were electric but there wasn't any room left in the electric panel. They also had a 120V full sized dryer which I'd never seen. I yanked out the 240 for the oven and the circuit for the dryer, bought propane appliances and redistributed the power throughout the house. They only had one 14 ga wire running the entire upstairs, lights, outlets, everything. No way I was going to try running window A/C units off of that.

 

Won't be long now, the days are getting shorter and shorter.

 

YES, bring on winter!

 

I love winter, but shush you, it's motorcycle season!

 

My house was built in '57, but it's a 150A service and all breakers are at least 20A. There's also a lot of room left in the panel, so they clearly thought ahead, but some of the stuff they did is just stupid.

The entire garage is on a 20A circuit. Lighting, door, outlets, everything. The garage and the breezeway room that I use as my office were clearly additions, so I don't understand why they didn't run more circuits in there or a sub panel. Now it'd be a pain to do because there is no access to the space above the breezeway room and it's on a slab so the basement ends before that room starts. And there's a pergola out back that it appears they ran power to by double-tapping into a 20A breaker with 14 gauge wire. Have to pop a 15A breaker in and split that off. The rest of the wiring is all 12 gauge, so no idea why they did that for that one spot.

I've started by fixing lighting. The garage lighting situation was useless, so I replaced everything with recessed can lights and 75w equivalent LED bulbs. Want to do the same to the basement to get rid of the tons of florescent fixtures. They also have front and rear flood lights that are directly wired without a switch, so they rely on the motion sensors.

 

Ugh. No please! I'm not ready!

 

I am so jelly of your sled!

 

For the new people and the absent minded

***REMINDER***

Meet & Greet, this Saturday the 24th @ 11am. Details in link

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/new-england-meet-greet-bbq-mod-day-6-24-17.480200/

 

I had a sewage backup in my basement/garage. I highly recommend finding out who owns your clean out pipes and getting them scoped and insured. This def could have cost me thousands more, and luckily insurance is covering the demo, sanitation, and rebuilding

 

@Sloth just finally met Patrick in person