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Old 04-13-2011, 06:16 PM
 
7 posts, read 28,652 times
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Hello all,

Upon moving into my home this past May I noticed that our furnace has one of the lowest efficiency ratings. In January I bought a pellet stove which decreased our oil usage but certainly not as much as we would have liked.

A plumber also noted that we have an inefficient "tank-less coil" system for our hot water.

My question is, does anyone have a ballpark figure for how much it would cost to install an electric hot water tank or cold start/indirect water heater? Or about how much it would cost to replace the furnace altogether with a more efficient model? I understand these are fairly broad questions but any advice/thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you!!
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Old 04-13-2011, 06:43 PM
 
Location: Maine
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It cost me just about $600 to put in a new 40 gallon electric hot water heater about a year ago.
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Old 04-13-2011, 08:18 PM
 
8,767 posts, read 18,666,326 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by abes292 View Post
Hello all,

Upon moving into my home this past May I noticed that our furnace has one of the lowest efficiency ratings. In January I bought a pellet stove which decreased our oil usage but certainly not as much as we would have liked.

A plumber also noted that we have an inefficient "tank-less coil" system for our hot water.

My question is, does anyone have a ballpark figure for how much it would cost to install an electric hot water tank or cold start/indirect water heater? Or about how much it would cost to replace the furnace altogether with a more efficient model? I understand these are fairly broad questions but any advice/thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you!!
We had the same type of system you have now. Two years ago we bought a System 2000 oil boiler with a heat exchanger and a 40 gallon exterior hot water tank. We have saved over 40% in oil since we installed it. It is a quiet as a microwave oven when it's running. We absolutely love it. It was just over $9500 installed but part of that was the $2000 double walled oil tank we had to buy as we're close to an aquifer supposedly. Thanks DEP. 40% with oil this high is some really good savings. I'd do it even if it was 15K to install that system. When saving close to $2000 a year in oil it doesn't take long to justify the initial costs.
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Old 04-14-2011, 04:18 AM
 
Location: Northern Maine
10,428 posts, read 18,679,925 times
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I have a conventional electric hot water heater. If I were to install a hot water heater today I would get an instant hot water heater using propane. If you are gone for a weekend or more it uses zero energy. Back when I had the oil hot water heater oil was 85 cents a gallon.
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Old 04-14-2011, 07:11 AM
 
4,566 posts, read 10,654,191 times
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I've seen some people installing high efficiency boilers like this one. Its a small direct vent boiler similar to a monitor heater. If you get a propane/gas one, they are about 98% efficient and unlike gas, they stay efficient.
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Old 04-14-2011, 12:41 PM
 
Location: Bar Harbor, ME
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If I were you I would have to gauge what the payback time would be for a $9500 INSTALLATION FOR HOT WATER. You could probably get a small hotwater electric tank and build a large box around it, and super insulate it with an R-60+ in foam all around. I doubt that this would cost much more than about $900 max.
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Old 04-14-2011, 12:55 PM
 
8,767 posts, read 18,666,326 times
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Originally Posted by Zarathu View Post
If I were you I would have to gauge what the payback time would be for a $9500 INSTALLATION FOR HOT WATER. You could probably get a small hotwater electric tank and build a large box around it, and super insulate it with an R-60+ in foam all around. I doubt that this would cost much more than about $900 max.
The $9500 isn't JUST hot water. It heats the whole house. "Oil Boiler" was the key to the unitiated.

Last edited by Cornerguy1; 04-14-2011 at 03:43 PM..
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Old 04-14-2011, 01:00 PM
 
1,402 posts, read 3,501,225 times
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Originally Posted by Maineah View Post
We had the same type of system you have now. Two years ago we bought a System 2000 oil boiler with a heat exchanger and a 40 gallon exterior hot water tank. We have saved over 40% in oil since we installed it. It is a quiet as a microwave oven when it's running. We absolutely love it. It was just over $9500 installed but part of that was the $2000 double walled oil tank we had to buy as we're close to an aquifer supposedly. Thanks DEP. 40% with oil this high is some really good savings. I'd do it even if it was 15K to install that system. When saving close to $2000 a year in oil it doesn't take long to justify the initial costs.

We just installed a similar system. Instead of a heat exchanger like Maineah went with, our tank (also 40 gallon) is heated by a zone piped off of our hydronic heating system.

Best money we've ever spent, and we haven't even seen how much we'll be saving on oil costs yet!. Hot water, great pressure....unlike the direct tankless coil we had before--those things stink and are horribly inefficient. I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would go for that system...

Our system upgrade cost us $2000...that was for the storage tank, new control panel, pipe, fittings, labor, etc. We didn't need to upgrade our boiler like Maineah.

Hope this helps...
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Old 04-14-2011, 06:57 PM
 
8,767 posts, read 18,666,326 times
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Maybe it's my Southern Maine upbringing but I don't think $9500 for a heat and hot water system that saves you 40% in oil is a bad investment. We're saving almost $2000 a year at current oil prices in oil saved. That's hard to argue with. The house is just over 2500 square feet on two levels and we have a woodstove that supplements the oil which we run in January and February constantly. We set the heat at 71 or 72 and walk around in tee shirts. We do not sit around in sweatshirts and snuggies all winter. Yet we STILL save 40% over the old ,loud, inefficent boiler we used to run at 60 degrees. We have endless hot water and pay almost half as much as we used to. The system will pay for itself in four years at current oil prices...If you can do better go for it.
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Old 04-14-2011, 07:05 PM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,461 posts, read 61,379,739 times
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We currently have a 50-gallon NG water heater. I bought it used from an appliance repair guy for $400. It had been in a 2bdrm apartment serving as their heat and hot-water. It was plumbed to their baseboard zones, as well as hot water faucets.

Here it is plumbed to provide us hot-water, and as a backup it can also feed our radiant floor heating system.

While I was building our house, we wintered over in an apartment. In that apartment our heat was likewise provided by a 50-gallon water heater.

Theses units run from $300 to $1,000 new at Sears, Home Depot, or Lowes.

So long as you place them inside your home I see no reason to add additional insulation around them.

Ours draws it's intake air from outside, and exhausts outside, but it sits inside.
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