Does turning the thermostat down save money? The short answer is yes.   The flow of heat from the house to the outside is proportional to difference between the temperature inside the house and the temperature of the air outside. if you allow the house to cool down,  that difference is made smaller and therefore the heat flow to the outside is less.

This means that by reducing the temperature

Digital setback thermostat

inside your house less energy  is required to maintain that cooler inside temperature.

Some people argue that the energy you use bringing it up to temperature negates the savings, but that energy use is  actually canceled out by the fact that when you do turn it down, it doesn’t run for that period of  time that the house is cooling off.

The average home will save about 2 percent for each degree you turn the temperature down for 8 hours. So it is worth turning it down for the day, or overnight. It does save money. You may not save much turning it down for a few hours. So if you turn it down from 70F to 65F overnight or during the day when no one is home, you should save around 10%!

There is one really large problem with turning the heat down when you go away, and it’s the reason that we advise our clients to leave the heat set at whatever their NORMAL turned down temperature is.

Over my 35 years of doing plumbing and heating, I have seen  dozens of freeze ups that have occurred in houses where the heat is NOT broken.

Here is the typical scenario: The homeowner is going away for a month to Florida. Lucky them!  So off they go, usually early on a cold morning, heading to the Expressway to go to Logan airport. The last thing they do as they leave the house in January is to turn the thermostat down to 55F. After all, no one is home so there is no need to keep the house any warmer. Normally they turn it down to 62F when they go to bed and it’s never a problem,  so why not turn it lower? Let’s see, another 7degrees, for 30 days, why they should save a good 14% off their energy bill, which is $350 a month, so that’s a savings of  $49.00. Here is the problem: when they left, the house was up to 70F as they got ready, then when they left they turned it down to 55F. They’ve done all the right things, fixed and caulked windows and doors and insulated where they could, so the house looses hear pretty slowly.  That 15 degree cooling off period takes most of the day, so the heat doesn’t come on until the afternoon. That long off period means that any piping in the house that isn’t far away from an outside wall has a chance to freeze and burst.

Burst pipe

This could be (and commonly is) water piping above the kitchen that has a breeze blowing on it down the joist bay. Normally there is enough heat around the house to prevent this from being a problem, but this day the heat is off all day.  Then the heat comes on, the pipe thaws, and there is a major disaster, that could go on for days! I’m pretty sure that this will cost a lot more than $40.00 to deal with.

My recommendation, to all my clients, is to leave the heat on the lowest normal temperature that you have set on your thermostat. I myself leave my heat on 62F, which is what is it set on overnight and most of the day, and I have a friend in my neighborhood check my house once a day. There are also various types of alarms that could be set to notify someone  when there is a problem, from simple thermostatically controlled light switching, to automated dialers that could be installed.

So turn your heat down, but be careful when you go away.

Lifetime Hot Water Tank

You know, it’s really funny that I’ve already written about high efficiency oil fired boilers, and about steam boilers, when the majority of the boilers that we install aren’t either one!

Nowadays, with the cost of fuel escalating, and with our country’s reliance on foreign energy products, we feel it’s really our duty to recommend installing high efficiency boilers whenever it’s possible.  It’s in everyone’s best interest.

A boiler is a large and long term investment, and to not install  the best, most efficient  product available at the time of installation usually leads to regrets within a few years. Make no mistake- fuel costs will go up. While it might cost more to install now, you’re savings will be that much more in the future.

Our favorite boiler to install is the Buderus GB142 series of hot water boilers.

This is a modulating, condensing boiler that can deliver up to 95% AFUE, especially in the shoulder months when the heat is not needed to full capacity. Even in colder weather you’ll get 90% or so. Your heating system will be more comfortable and you will get even greater savings, because the boiler comes with an outdoor reset control that will adjust the water temperature in the system based on the outside temperature. That’s designed right into the boiler system.

Lately we’ve been experimenting with turning the temperatures down on our systems to further enhance savings. With this type of boiler, if you can keep the system return temperature below 150 degrees, you’re going to get that 95% fuel usage. We can just about guarantee a savings of 30% off your gas bill, and one of my clients has saved over 50%! Since he was smart enough to have us install this boiler 2 years ago, he’s way ahead of the game on energy usage and savings. As are a lot of my folks, as you can see from my pictures.

When we do install these boilers, we  also reccomend installing an indirectly fired hot water heater, usually a Superstore 40 or 60 gallon one depending on the size of your household. It just makes sense to take advantage of your 95% AFUE boiler by using it to heat your hot water, in a tank that is guaranteed for life! That’s right, no more burst tanks to clean up after. That will add to your long term savings!!

The client contacted us out of desperation. The plumber they used had installed a new steam boiler, and they had a lot of problems, like the ones I mentioned in a previous post, but also very uneven heating and ridiculous gas bills. Unlike the low bidders that I mentioned in that post, this plumber was a good guy and responded to the complaints by getting the boiler company to send someone to check the near boiler piping and suggest corrections, which were done. They installed a more sensitive control on the boiler, and did just about everything they could think of to fix it. I was paid to come to the house and make an analysis of the system, to figure out why nothing they did helped.

Well, the boiler install, the header and etc. looked fine. I checked the radiators and found that except for one area, someone in the past had removed the steam radiators and installed iron pipe baseboards instead. Not to jump to any conclusions, I also checked the piping to the radiators and the pipe sizing throughout the system.  This is what I found. First, baseboard on one pipe steam just does not work. There are exceptions, and there are some clever ways to sometimes make it work, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it really should not be used. It will never work the way it should, it will be noisy and often spray water onto the walls. When my clients ask me to do it I say no!  Sometimes you can put it on 2 pipe steam but even that can be a problem. Steam needs space and baseboard just doesn’t have it. Besides the baseboard, I found that much of the steam piping was installed poorly, with the wrong sizes, inadequate pitch and no insulation. The alterations that had been done over the years had just made things worse. Hey, even 80 years ago there were bad installers!

The moral of this story? If they had approached me about replacing the boiler, I would have told them not to waste their money. I would have told them that the system needs to be replaced as it will never perform the way it should. I would have told them to change to hot water with a 95% AFUE Buderus boiler and a lifetime hot water heater. It would have cost more, but in the long run they would have saved money and been more comfortable in their house. Their heating bills would, most likely, have been cut in half, or maybe even more! Instead they’ve spent many thousands of dollars to only make the problems worse. I would have seen this BEFORE they wasted their money.

Hey I’m a steam guy, but I do know when someone should give up on a botched up system. I’m only sorry that I didn’t get the call before they spent that money. I’m even sorry for the plumber, as he was trying to do right by his customer. He just didn’t know what to do!

Here’s what happens.

First we get a call the the pipes are knocking, banging, it sounds like someone is hitting the pipes with a hammer, like someone is trying to break in, or like the pipes are going to break. We visit the house and look over the system and usually find our 2 most common problems.

The first is lack of maintenence. You should really have your steam boiler professionaly cleaned once a year. The manufacturer’s of the new internal low water cutoffs say that the probes need to be cleaned each year, and that’s a job for a professional. That probe is the only thing standing between you and a new boiler.  When we clean a steam boiler, we also remove the site glass and valves and clean them all out, replace the pigtail that protects the pressuretrol, clean the boiler and skim clean the inside of the boiler. We also check the external parts of the heat exchanger and clean them, looking for evidence of incompete combustion. This job takes a few hours.

We also look at the boiler piping, and this is the second most common problem. It’s very interesting to us, as everything you need to know to install a steam boiler the right way is shown by the boiler companies in the instructions that come with the boiler!! In the Burnham book it’s been on page 17 for a few years now.  This piping is vey important. It is the most common problem that we find when we get those banging complaints, after the lack of cleaning.  The schematic shows some important details, such as the size, heights, and the locations for the system feeds, equalizer line and Hartford loop, and THESE DETAILS MATTER!! This is because without these details being attended to , there will be a lot of water carrying over into the steam piping system. When you watch the glass on the side of your boiler and it is surging down to the bottom of the glass, that is the water actually going UP the steam pipe, wreaking havoc with both your peace of mind and your wallet.  Nothing can cure this but correcting the installation.

When you get a price on replacing that boiler, make sure that the installer knows steam. Just because they can cut and thread pipe (and even worse some installers use copper) doesn’t mean they know what they are doing. The installer needs to get his head out of the boiler room and check the system for radiator sizes, pipe sizes and insulation.

By the way, all your steam piping should be insulated.  Running without it will make your noise problems worse, and waste money.

Dennis Foley Plumbing is a flat rate plumbing contractor. That means that we will give you a price in advance for just about anything that we do, and we expect to get paid the same day.

Standard Water Heater

To help illustrate what a flat rate contractor is, let me tell you a few stories.

Here is a typical burst water heater call that many of you have put in to a plumber in the past. Let’s say he’s a good one and calls you back promptly. He comes to your house, takes a look, maybe makes a few phone calls, leaves and returns either that day or the next, with a new water heater. He disconnects the old one, installs the new one during which he realizes that he’s missing a part. He leaves to get that part, returns promptly, finishes the job, takes the old water heater with him and leaves. Hey, I said he was a good one. He called you back, did the job promptly, took his trash with him and completed the job in a timely manner. There is one big problem though. You have no idea of what the bill is going to be. You don’t know if you’re going to pay for the first visit, the return visit, the extra trip to the supply house, you don’t know what was included and what was extra, you don’t know if taking the old heater costs more, and you have no idea when you’ll get a bill in the mail! Sound familiar? If you’ve used a good plumber it will. I know, because I was that good plumber. My customers used to call me up and ask for the bill! When I was busy I wouldn’t bill for more than a month for smaller jobs, sometimes more. And my customers didn’t know what I was charging them, and when. Often I had to go back and figure out what I was charging them myself. I didn’t know either.

Contrast that to what we do as flat rate plumbers. First, we strive to always have our phones answered by a person. Sometimes it might be an answering service, but they always let us know when someone calls. Then we explain that there is a $49 dispatch fee, and that the plumber or technician will tell you the cost after they look over the problem. He arrives, looks at the water heater and gives you a price. You know the cost in advance. Many times he’ll have what he needs to do the job on his truck, and will do it right then, and you know the cost in advance. He explains what is included in the job, and let’s you know if any thing not included needs to  be repaired. And you know that potential extra cost in advance. He starts the water heater and realizes that his truck is missing an essential bit of hardware. He has to go to the supply house to get it, but you know it’s not costing you anything extra, because you know the cost in advance. He finishes, cleans up and takes the old water heater, which you know was included in the cost, and collects the money. You knew at all times what was happening, and what the cost was. That is flat rate. Hey, we’ll show you the prices in the book anytime you want!

I can tell you  more stories. Here’s another one about water heaters. One of our customers decided to have Home Cheapo install a water heater for them. Hey, it was 30% less than the cost my plumber quoted. I do understand that motivation, I’m not rich either. To keep the story short I’ll tell you the outcome. He didn’t have hot water for 2 weeks. There were many trips to his house, and many extras, to the point where the cost ended up being over $300 more than our quote. Of course, they would have hot water in few hours if they had given us the job. Just check out Yelp to get some feedback about Cheapo Depot plumbers. You do get what you pay for.

Here’s another one. We had to replace a back outlet power flush toilet. We hate them, and our toilet company doesn’t make them. We quoted the job and installed the new one. There were so many problems with it that we had to return the first one and install another one. There were so many problems with that one that we returned it and installed a third one from a different manufacturer. The customer paid the original quote for the plumbing. That’s it. Hey, we gave him a price and we stood by it

In the price book there is a list of value rates. Those are the discounted rates that the The Denny Club members pay.

Thanks for listening. Sorry I don’t have any pictures of money!

G125BE Low-NOx Residential Oil Boiler

I just spent 8 hours learning the ins and outs of Buderus’ new oil-fired hot water boiler. It has a new kind of burner that uses a special set up, hence the 8 hours.

This boiler is amazing. They offer it in 2 configurations, a non condensing version that is rated at 89% Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE), and a condensing version that is rated at 94% AFUE. This is good news for those of you that don’t have gas available, as we have been installing 95% AFUE gas fired hot water boilers for a few years. Now they are availble for oil fired applications.

It’s not just the AFUE that makes these systems so energy efficient. Yes, they do convert over 90% of the potential energy in the fuels into heat energy, but they also utilize outdoor reset controls that modulate the temperature of the water in the system based on the outdoor temperature. This ALONE will save a minimum of 10% of your fuel bill, even on an old boiler. With a boiler that can handle low temperatures, you are able to save even more! This is because the lower the temperature you can run, the more money you save.

By the way,  Buderus will only sell this boiler to someone who has taken the class, and we are the only ones trained in its repair.  It is state of the art technology, backed by one of the best boiler and cast iron makers in the world.