Before & After Photos

I bet you've never seen one of these before! It's an original coal-fired boiler from the 1880's that was converted to oil sometime in the 1930's. And it was still working when the client called about an upgrade. Of course, she was paying a fortune for heating oil while keeping the thermostat set on 58-degrees so she didn't go bankrupt.

She opted to replace it with a 95% efficient Bosch Greenstar Combi boiler. This boiler provides both hot water for her radiators and hot water to the taps in the sinks, shower, etc. Her heating costs have dropped by 50% even though she sets the thermostat for 68-degrees now. 

This is great looking installation that she is proud to have in the basement of Her Old House.

Old house can be not only expensive to heat and cool but also uncomfortable. This client wanted warm floors in the winter and lower utility bills. We helped them get both by encapsulating the crawlspace. The crawlspace was vented to the outside so cold, dry air was coming into the house in the winter and making the floors cold. Because the ductwork for the house is also in the crawlspace, the outside vents were also contributing to high heating bills.

The crawlspace walls were insulated with R-13 rigid foam board and the wooden rims were sealed and insulated with closed cell spray foam. The floor was covered with a super-thick reinforced vapor barrier to prevent moisture from coming up out of the ground and into the sealed crawlspace. And of course the vents were closed with our exclusive vent covers that can be removed if water gets on top of the vapor barrier from a plumbing leak.

This crawlspace is bright, clean, and comfortable now!

The attic is the place to start if you want to improve your home's comfort and energy efficiency. This attic was air sealed to prevent conditioned air from leaking into the attic. We created a beautiful new insulated storage deck and added 18-in of new cellulose insulation. These folks can expect lower heating and cooling bills of about 30%. And they have a nice clean space to store their Christmas stuff!

Our client had a 35-year old Weil-McLain gas boiler that was still working but was starting to make weird noises. NOTE - Weird noises with heating and air conditioning equipment are never because something is good is going on.

The old boiler used the draft from the chimney to draw the flue gases up and out of the house. But the chimney had begun deteriorating on the inside and chimney debris had fallen into the furnace heat exchanger and created the noise as the flue gas moved around the debris. This would eventually have caused carbon monoxide to enter the basement, so maybe the noise was a good thing after all.

She decided to replace the boiler with an 84% efficient Weil-McLain CGi boiler that would cut her heating bills by over 20%. It has a draft fan that pulls the flue gas out of the boiler and blows it into the chimney. If debris ever blocks the flue, the CGi will sense the blockage and turn the boiler off so there is no danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. We also installed a Z-Flex chimney liner to prevent any chimney debris from entering the flue. Debris will fall around the liner but not into it.

This old house is now safe and much more efficient.

How do you bring an old hot water heating system that uses cast iron radiators into the 21st century? Do like this client and call Alber Service Company for a 95% efficient Bradford-White Brute Combi boiler. This boiler replaces and old 65% efficient cast iron boiler so it is going to cut the heating bills by 30%. But it also produces domestic hot water for showering, dishes, laundry, etc. So the hot water heating bills will also drop by 30%.

And comfort is improved because it uses outdoor rest. This means the water to the radiators only gets as hot as needed to offset the current conditions outside. The old system would deliver 180-degree water even if it was 55-degrees outside. This resulted in the radiators getting too hot and the room temperature soaring above the thermostat set point. Not good!

Outdoor reset also adds savings to already 30% savings by minimizing back loss. Back loss describes what happens in back of the radiator when it is pushed up against a cold outside wall. By only heating the radiator as much as needed for the conditions at any given moment, the amount of heat driven through the wall to the outside is greatly reduced. 

Oh, yeah. And it looks great! Like a little NASA science project.