Does anyone have any experience owning and/or servicing one of these units? Friend of mine just got one at the beginning of this season and says its great.
I’m wondering if they are worth the additional dollars above the normal cast iron boiler systems and if they truly have the extra savings they say you can get out of them. Also, do they stand the test of time.
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I had one in my house for many years. Bought it from a small oil dealer who did the service on it also. I was very pleased , quiet and real stingey on the oil. Maybe 10 years ago that small oil dealer was bought up by a big one, thier sevice dept was not familliar with them, once they got their mitts on it it never ran right again. Smoked out my house a couple of times then one of their guys disabled one of the saftey's and the thing basically melted in place.
I replace it with a Buhnam with a Becket burner, simple so anyone can fix it. Uses maybe 5% more oil than the S 2000.
I am a remodeling contractor and have had the same plumber for 20yrs. I was shopping for a new boiler for my hydroair system and looked at the 2000. My plumber was not so sure of the 2000, he said, yes the 2000 has less water to heat to send to the space, but a conventional boiler 10-15 gal has more standby capacity ie zone pump will run longer before the burner starts while with the 2000 the burner starts almost at stat call. I went with a weil mclain three pass and am very happy. He was right, a lot less burner run time (maint. factor). Also the mclain was 1.5 grand cheaper than the 2000, thats a lot of oil - my 2c
1.5 grand isn't much oil, long term.the system 2000 is really supposed to be run with a buffer tank. that eliminates the cycling issue your plumber is talking about.If you use a buffer tank with any low mass boiler, it's pretty effective. In oil, there aren't many others to choose from though.You might even need a buffer tank on a conventional boiler for many multi zone systems.The issue isn't really water capacity.. indeed, the buffer tank, adding water, increases efficiency quite dramatically in some cases. The issue is boiler mass itself. the conventional boilers have a bunch of metal you have to heat up before you start getting useful heat, and unless you have a reset control, under shoulder loads that's all heat you lose when the heat demand is done. That's why low mass boilers, on high water content systems, are often more efficient.-------------------------------------
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Search online for a government efficiency study done by Brookhaven National Labs, where the System 200 was evaluated.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I have one in the home I'm sitting in right now. It's oil fired, 18 yo and has been very good to us. The house has baseboard heat in indirect hot water.
Our home up North also uses one but is LP fired. We have a mix of BB heat, RFH, 1 FCU and indirect HW. RFH needs mass and the 2000 does not do this. I added a 40 gallon hot water tank in the loop and that stopped the short cycling.
Your local service should dictate what you install.
Thanks. I've asked a tech or two when they have been here servicing my old 40 year old boiler and they say the 2000 systems are great. They dont normally install them though. They recommened the Weil Mclain or burnham but said they will install the 2000 if I want.
Little more expensive but wondering if its worth it.