We have a 10-year-old Buderus GB142 wall-hung gas boiler that is suffering from myriad corrosion issues. The HVAC service folks recommend either dumping in $3,300+ for a “major renovation”, including replacement of the manifold and everything connecting to the boiler, or spending $15,500 (minus $2,750 in rebates under the poor-renters-should-subsidize-rich-homeowners political theory that prevails in Massachusetts) on a new 150,000(ish) BTU high efficiency system.
Does anyone have experience with these beasts? Are they worth fixing? Are we going to pay $3,300 now and then $15,500 a year from now when something else blows up?
Also, if we do decide to replace, Lochinvar or Bosch? (presumably we don’t want to go back into the Buderus money sinkhole, though on the other hand Bosch liked them well enough to buy them!)
Note that my glorious plan to replace this with an old-style standard efficiency boiler ($2,000 part every 20 years) seems to be impractical. It has to go into a small closet (no basement in this house due to architectural genius back in the 1960s) and the latest code would require fan-driven make-up air. So it wouldn’t be any cheaper than having a high-efficiency unit, according to the HVAC guys (and, for some reason, everyone who comes out to fix boilers on Christmas Day or crawl around in attics in July seems to identify as male; where is Hillary to address this injustice?).
[Separately, this is a great illustration of why official CPI is grossly understated for homeowners. The cost of maintaining a house has skyrocketed (very labor-intensive in a country where a worker can cost $30,000/year in health insurance premium before the first dollar of wages has been paid). The cost of paying real estate taxes has gone up dramatically (and about to go up 30% more in our town due to the approval of a $110 million school project (to renovate a school building occupied by 440 town-resident K-8 students!)). None of this is reflected in CPI (background) because they look at what we would pay to rent our house if we could find a landlord sufficiently passionate about losing money to want to buy it, maintain it, and rent it out.]
Update: Readers commented about what a rip-off the above quote was, for the Lockinvar 155,000 BTU boiler and associated fittings. So I got a competitive quote from a regular plumbing contractor who is excellent: $20.750. And I got a second quote from a friend’s heating guy: $15,000 plus or minus. Apparently this is the price in the Boston suburbs. We decided to go with the HVAC company’s $15,500 plan. Typical Americans can’t afford to live in America, is my conclusion. It just looks like we can because we’re using legacy infrastructure that hasn’t worn out or fallen down yet.
15000!?! Are you sure there’s no extra 0 in there? We changed ours (Vaillant something…) in the summer and it cost just over 4000€ for the burner unit, water tank and installation.
If online conversion is correct you’re looking for a 44kW unit? Again… Are you sure you need that much? Are you heating up an apartment building? Half that would be at the top end of what I’d expect on a large(ish) house with poor insulation, quarter at most for a new construction.
Is a 10 year lifespan normal for this type of boiler? Wondering if a precursor to any remediation would be to look at what might be causing corrosion, e.g. pH issue, dissimilar metals, etc. If the issue is unique to Buderus, personally I would just replace it rather than repair; not based on optimizing total cost of ownership, but more so maximizing the period of time before I have to revisit a problem like this.
Do you heat hot water with the same unit? Could that be the corrosion issue? Is it corrosion or precipitation? Do you ever descale the unit?
Anyway, it appears the Bosch 151 KW high efficiency unit can be had for $3200. Seems hard to get from there to $15,500. Of course, I had a quote to replace a gas domestic hot water heater for $2800 where the equipment cost was about $500-600. Couldn’t have been more than 4 hours work for one person, or 3 hours for one person and one undocumented strong back.
I’ve found many web reviews in German stating the high failure rate of this model. It seems to be pretty unreliable even without the corrosion issues. I would not spend money repairing this thing. I am a very happy owner of a Viessmann boiler. Unfortunately, I think the don’t have service in the US. From my personal experience, I would not recommend Bosch. I have no experience with Lochinivar. (We have Vaillant for a small apartment — 14 years and just maintenance).
$15,000 ????? I have a bridge to sell you. Get some more quotes. You are about to get boned and pay for it. A new unit is in the $5k range. It should take less than a day to switch it out if you go for the same model, minimal mods, so another couple thousand max labor and parts. Seriously Phil, don’t let this happen to you. I wouldn’t rebuild it, get a new one. In fact I would get a second opinion as to whether it needs to be replaced at all. I don’t understand why the manifold needs to be replaced, but would have to see it, maybe post some pics. A good install will allow you to replace the boiler easily with just a few connections.
Here is a DYI place that sells them, not suggesting you do it yourself, but this should give you a good idea what the unit costs. Good luck.
https://www.ecomfort.com/Buderus-GB142-60/p37558.html
Japanese tankless on-demand gas water heaters are tiny and cheap. Is there some reason those don’t work in the U.S.?
One small box mounted on the external wall of our house supplies the kitchen, the bathroom faucet, and the tub (which automatically heats up, maintains temperature, and talks to you, “Momentarily your bath will be ready.”
Home Depot sells tankless. They seem to go for about a thousand dollars.
I remember the last place we lived, the on-demand heater was operational after nine years, but was rusting, so give it a 10-year lifespan.
Indian medical student kicked out of college by racist white professors for questioning their SJW beliefs
Kieran Ravi Bhattacharya was a medical student at the University of Virginia and he has been kicked out after having questioned his white college professor’s SJW beliefs.
Here is the audio of the lecture where he questioned his professor’s SJW beliefs:
https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/microagressions-presented-by-amwa
He speaks from 28:45 to 34:00
Here is the audio of the suspension hearing:
https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/asac
Here is a picture of the people who were at the suspension hearing:
https://imgur.com/a/RUvKXNH
Notice how 14 out of the 16 people at that suspension hearing are white people. If this is not an act of racism against a sincere indian medical student, then I don’t know what is. Look at their smug arrogant faces as they kick him out for DARING to question their SJW beliefs.
His twitter handle is kieranravib if you want to ask him questions or set up an interview with him
The system is somewhat oversized, though it also heats hot water via a SuperStor tank (working fine after 10 years so it is not being touched; it essentially becomes a zone of the main system). The house is not huge, about 2,400 square feet, but the ceilings at high so presumably a lot of the heat ends up there. Also, we lose power fairly often and the house then falls to 40 or 50 degrees inside. It is nice to have a system that can recover reasonably quickly. These boilers can scale back to 1/5th of their rated capacity and there is only about $1,000 in price difference from “just right” to “a little oversized”.
I’m not sure that the quote exceeds what prevails in our area. I talked to a plumber who doesn’t do boiler installs. He said that it is rare to see an installation, even of the cheapest gear, that costs the consumer less than $10,000. He explained that all of the fittings around the boiler add about $2,500 in parts. Then add $5,000 in labor and you’re at $10k even with a basic boiler. See above for how the U.S. is now not really affordable for Americans. That’s why everyone needs to live in means-tested public housing and let the professional building management deal with issues like this!
You might want to investigate a whole house generator to deal with frequent power outages.
I replaced a central AC unit on my waterfront property in NH, same theory up there as your plumber, just expensive, especially when you are on the waterfront. I got 2 quotes at about $11k, this is for a system replacement. Indoor unit, outdoor unit, and an adapter to fit the existing ductwork. Too much for me, I asked around, found a guy who quoted $6,500, same deal as above and he replaced the copper line set, which the other guys were going to reuse. He said most of the issues he’s seen are caused by reusing the line set, so he replaces them. That was a few years ago, system runs great.
There are some great plumbers and HVAC guys out there, but there are some who will take you for everything you’ve got. Caveat emptor. I hope you get your heat fixed Phil.
In late 2017, I replaced the AC air handler (indoor component), condensor (outdoor component, 4-ton BTU), and refrigerant lines in my 60-year old S. FL house at a cost of $5500 including labor and 10-year total parts & labor warranty. Estimates ranged from $5500 to $8500 for the same unit. No problems so far.
In early 2018, I replaced my standard 50-gallon tanked, natural gas-powered water heater with an exterior-mounted, tankless unit at a total cost of $1100 (after $500 rebate from Florida City Gas). This freed up some nice space in the utility room and allowed me to eliminate some unattractive vent ducting.