Please, need advice about oil burner & tankless water heater

[preCRT]

Dad died last year, so he can't give me any advice.

The house is heated by an oil burner, and has a tankless water heater. It was installed in 1968.

The controller on the burner just died, repair estimate is $600, part & labor.

Also, the coil of the tankless sprung a leak, water coming out of burner. Was told replacement & installation is $1,000, just for coil..

Entire mess could fail after spending $1600, because the rusting hulk is ancient.
Waiting for cost estimate of replacing everything.

What to do??

I'm in the northeast if it makes a difference.

 

[herm0016]

by tankless, do you mean a water heating loop in the oil burning boiler supplying heat to the home?

modern "tankless" refers to on demand type units that are separate from the home heat. if it is ancient, you will be further ahead to replace with something much more efficient for heating water and for heating the home.

 

[preCRT]

My apologies, I'm woefully dumb when it comes to this. Here are a pic of the rusting hulk & what may be the non-tank hanging from the ceiling?

Water is dripping out on the floor to the right of the burner.

 

[NetWareHead]

Sounds like you have a "tankless coil". The boiler heats the house but a coil immersed in the boiler water also provides for domestic hot water.

I would not sink any more money into that than you need to. Installed in 1968, its almost 50 years old! Complete with an old style ceiling mounted expansion tank. If the controller died and the boiler wasnt leaking, go for the controller replacement. Oil is cheap right now and even an old and inefficient boiler like that wont cost that much more to run than a new oil boiler. The leak is the final nail in the coffin. The leak means the boiler is constantly filling itself with fresh water to replenish whats lost by the leak. New water contains oxygen which will accelerate the metal corrosion and the leak will just get worse. Replace the boiler now before the winter comes and you're left without heat.

When you replace the boiler avoid the tankless coil as an option for domestic hot water. While its cheap and gives you hot water, it means that your boiler will run all year round and stay hot in the chance event it gets a call for hot water. A waste of oil if you ask me and heats up the basement all year long.

The optimal setup is a boiler with a separate indirect hot water heater, takes care of both house heat and domestic hot water. have your plumber quote you this setup with whatever boiler, burner and indirect he is comfortable with. If you have a boiler, you can avoid the expensive tankless water heaters (different than what you have right now which is a tankless coil).

 

[preCRT]

Thank you!

BTW, my Dad had an override emergency power shut off switch for the burner installed in the kitchen, so I had been keeping the burner off all summer except when I wanted hot water.

So I should call plumbers for quotes, not burner service companies?

 

[NetWareHead]

Thank you!

BTW, my Dad had an override emergency power shut off switch for the burner installed in the kitchen, so I had been keeping the burner off all summer except when I wanted hot water.

So I should call plumbers for quotes, not burner service companies?

Its possible the burner service company could do that work. Ask for an estimate.

Most plumbers can do the work too if they know boilers and how to do domestic hot water. I usually think of this as plumbing work since it looks like you will have a fair amount of pipe replacement as well. Or contact hvac contractors and ask if they can do boilers. Some of those guys only do hot air furnaces