Posted by Steve on October 23, 2001 at 17:43:36:
I recently puchased a 90 year old home with a steam boiler from the the earlt 70's. My natural gas bill has been outrageous even though it is early fall. My thermostat is set at 66 and the heat only runs at night sometimes. The house has all new quality replacemnt windows and the plaster walls have been removed, insulated and drywalled. I had a heating proffesional out to do an inspection and he said that the boiler is way oversized and this is my problem. The boiler is rated at 210,000 BTU input and 168,00 BTU output. The sq. feet listed on the boiler is 525. The service man calculated the sq. feet of my sytem at 375 and I did the same calculations using a chart at the colonial website and got 350. Can an oversized boiler cause that much of a problem. I checked with the gas co. and had them give me the gas usage from the previous owner during Jan. 2001. It was 475 ccf of gas which is about $500.