oil baseboard w indirect hot water

grainger12002 · Mar 23, 2014

curious if any other have a buderus w a indirect hot water,1 year old almost and seems the indirect calls for warm up often...know its been cold but still seems to be using a bit of oil for heat and h\w ? 2000 sq ft home ,25 years old,use wood fire in basement as a supplement, any thoughts appreciated

dave1949 · Mar 23, 2014

Used to have a similar setup--I think. Oil burner boiler with HW indirect next to it in the basement. Zone pump to circulate boiler water through the HW heat exchanger coil.

Three things come to mind.
1) What temperature is the hot water set to? Is the thermostat working correctly? 120 deg. should work fine and save you a bit of oil.
2) Is the hot water tank well-insulated?
3) Has the oil burner been serviced, oil flow and igniter gap are correct, flue temp is correct, boiler air passages brushed out, etc? It could be the running efficiency of the boiler being low and nothing to do with the HW tank itself.

DFB · Mar 24, 2014

I agree about the temperature setting on the hot water. I also have a indirect oil fired hot water heater and lowering the water temperature made a big difference in how much the burner ran.

grainger12002 · Mar 26, 2014

its amtrol champion red, also very new,not sure what else, it is set at 120 just seems to run alot

dave1949 · Mar 27, 2014

Oil burners need annual maintenance generally. I would start by making sure the boiler is up to snuff and ask about your concerns that it seems to run a lot. That would be a baseline for investigating any suspected problems. It helps tremendously to find the "right" oil technician.

I once had what I thought was good oil tech., turns out he wasn't cleaning the soot out between the boiler tank fins. One day I looked up at the chimney and there was black sooty smoke rolling out, looked like the Queen Mary getting ready to depart. :laughing: For the two-three years he was supposedly taking care of our boiler, I'm sure we burned extra oil due to lost efficiency.

zzvyb6 · Mar 27, 2014

Consider reducing the size of the burner nozzle. It may now be too big for your needs and this can cause overheating and overcycling.

A smaller size nozzle will run longer burn times but heat the water system contents more uniformly. I had an oil hot water tank that cycled a lot. When I downsized the orifice, it ran more consistently. The total burner times may be slightly longer, but the amount of oil used was a lot less. The stack temp was LOT cooler, too. Furnace guy said it was too hot to be safe.