New Yorker: Return on Investment

As many of you remember I do have a New Yorker WC-90 boiler that I bought for cheap and rebuilt, but as of yet have never hooked up. Part of that is because it just has never been cost effective to do so. Initially I was going to buy a gasification boiler, but even the dealer said the ROI on a $7000 unit versus the propane heating system I currently have would never pay for itself. Since then the price of propane has plummeted to the point this year where I took the 10 cords of firewood I had cut for my New Yorker and instead bought 1200 worth of propane that will heat my home for the year. Now I am getting offers to buy my New Yorker, but I am hesitant to sell.

I bought it cheap and rebuilt it myself so I know it is sound making for a cheap return on investment. I mean I do not see myself buying another boiler this good for such little money. I might not be able to justify a $7000 boiler, but a $700 one is an easy ROI.

However the New Yorker is from the early 1980's and is designed for high temps where as my radiant system is designed for less than 100 degree temps. Most of the time it is pumping water in the mid 80's range. I do have a mixing circulator to knock down the higher heat on my main boiler loop, but being a hand fed unit I can only control the rate of burn by the draft control. I know I need a dump zone, but what good is that if it is constantly dumping? I could raise my thermostats to run at higher rates, but that too can only go so far...so I have serious concerns about controlling the New Yorker. My father has a radiant system similar to mine, and installed a add-on boiler to it to cut down on oil consumption, and it works well, but it is a stoker; so in essence he has two forms of control: draft and fuel. I would think that would be much better! His cost $4500 and can burn coal....

The last big variable I have is home size. My house now is only a few thousand square feet, but I am constantly building on. (I have 4 daughters). As the house grows it is going to take far more than $1200 to heat it per year so my New Yorker would be running more thereby possibly justifying itself. I could keep selling the wood to pay for the additional propane, or burn it myself.

There are just so many variables here I am not really sure which is the best direction to take...

With 4 daughters your domestic hot water load may exceed the heating load.

Do you have a place for the boiler and a chimney?

my opinion is... its all fun & games until the propane/oil & gas Nazi's get a hair cross their azz as sure as the wind blows & the sun shines prices WILL change and if your wood is free your going to want a way to utilize it!

i am heating 3,000 sq ft, 2100 of house, and 900 of garage, and dhw for two, and have no problem controlling mine, it rarely ever dumps, but my system also gravity flows on its own, keeping it very steady, as far as your temp concerns, thats what mixing valves are for. it really depends on how well your insulated, ive burned 3018 pounds to date this year, since 9/26, costing me 413 dollars, minus the 80 dollars in electric I have saved heating my hot water, so 333 dollars so far. like rob said though, 4 kids with dhw will kill it if its a coil like mine, the coil really seems to draw down the 90, I believe a indirect would be a lot better on it, utilizing the boiler water instead of the coil.
run the new yorker for now to supplement the propane, and if it cant keep up them theres your answer.

Rob R. wrote:With 4 daughters your domestic hot water load may exceed the heating load.

Do you have a place for the boiler and a chimney?

Yeah I have a spot and semi-got it installed though I am thinking about moving it. It is in our finished mudroom, but looks kind of yucky when you come through the front door to get into the house. I am thinking about moving it out into what is a 1 car garage which may:

1. House the firewood
2. Be turned into a recreation room for our daughters

Either way it would allow for a straight shot (zero elbows) into our existing system a scant 10 feet away.

The Boiler Techs that were here the other day thought I might need a new mixing circulator that would inject cold water into the system to keep the temp low. Again my system only requires 80 degree water so they might be right, but it seems counterintuitive to heat water up only to chill it back down. Maybe all this is just a hook-it-up-and-see-by-trial-and-error type of thing???

Yes it seems that way, unfortunately though if u only plan on burning wood in the New Yorker I think it will fail, they are not a good wood burner at all, my co worker had a 130 model, heated his house with it and was very unsuccessful with wood, he would not try coal, so he went with a wood master 4400 owb, crazy guy.

I would not use it if the intention is to burn wood. With your application it will smudge all the time and be a creosote monster.

Here is what I would do...
Setup two or three indirect fired tanks...
One for the radiant heat the other for DHW...
Keep the boiler at its happy high temp 180*...
and treat the tanks as zones...
Do bigger tanks 80 or 120 gallons...
Most radiant systems can knock 140* down to 80*...
With a 3 way valve...
I feel for ya with all the girls and the DHW use...

Yeah I hear ya guys...I heard they are creosote monsters as well, and of course seeing the light some twenty years ago and being a coal burner and all...!!!

If I was my fathers age I might spring for his type of boiler and burn coal in it instead of pellets as he does, but at 41 and hundreds of acres of woods, it is almost silly to buy coal. Maybe I should just cut firewood and sell it to the silly ones that burn coal and laugh all the way to the coal tipple instead?

Sounds like the OP is looking for someone to tell him to sell the NYer. Sounds like he should from my perspective.

Does not look like he has a need for it.

Sell the wood buy coal...
Thought you were considering coal in the boiler...
Retail package the wood...
ooh only $5 for that bundle...
can I have 10?...
Sure at close to $500 a cord take it all...

If you have no free time and don't mind buying propane, I see no reason to install the New Yorker at all. If you want to be setup for when propane returns to 3+ dollars per gallon, that is a different story.

Selling the firewood is likely to make you more $ than you would save by burning it in the New Yorker. I would plan on burning anthracite in the boiler, since you can store it until you need it, and avoid the creosote and chimney fires.

You should be able to pipe it into the existing system with a pair of close tee's in the primary loop. An indirect water heater would be a great way to produce DHW with both boilers.

In all honesty I was neither looking to sell the New Yorker nor intent on keeping it; I have a curse of looking at everything from both sides. With that it can be hard to make a decision.

As for firewood, I sure wish it was $500 a cord here. I am not sure it is because of the economic situation or just because most of the paper mills are closing (3 in a single week last month), but the price of wood is dropping pretty fast. In two weeks time it went down by $14 a cord. It does not sound like much, but for large landowners who manage their forests, the investment potential is no different then the stock market. The price of wood dropping by $14 a cord, at roughly 30 cord per acre, over the acreage of the wood lot can be substantial. Granted like the stock market you do not actually "lose" any money until the wood is cut at that lower rate, but it can be cause for worry.

My forester is pushing me pretty hard to do some cutting, but with the lower price I am holding back. I just ran the numbers from last year and harvested a mere 1% of what I have for volume, and based on typical growth rates for Maine, grew far more than I cut. That's alright but forest only yields about $25 per acre per year where as agricultural ground can yield closer to $100 per acre per year, but there is more work involved and it has to be good ground too.

I typically deal in tree length wood, although I have sold fitted firewood before. It is just easier then dealing with bounced checks and all the nonsense that goes with personal dealings. With brokers you truck the wood today and get a check Sunday. I like that, but you make a lot less as well, around $70 per cord tree length here roadside. I did alright this year because I had some tree length that had seasoned all summer and it was a hot commodity this fall when everyone was just selling green wood ($100 per cord tree length roadside), but normally it would take 2 times as much tree length wood to buy enough propane for my home.

I do realize a lot of people think land ownership is the ultimate thing, but in all honesty it takes a lot of time, energy and money to manage all of it well. I do not even put myself in that category. I would say only 75% of my land is at proper production levels for either agriculture ground or forest, and while we have plans to get aspects of it up to par, it all takes time and money. But Katie and I have done well. We are a few years behind from where I want to be, but in the end our plans always come to fruition, it just takes longer than we wish it would.

Depending on the layout of your house, a modern woodstove might be a good compromise.

As for heating water up to ~170*F only to cool it down to your desired 80*F, the water you use to cool it with is the radiant loop cooler return water.

Your boiler full of ~175*F is just a heat source concentrate...you simple replenish the difference of the heat left out in the loop with enough heat to re-top it off back to 80*F

There are no inefficiencies in only taking that little bit of heat that you need and leaving the remainder in the boiler.