Boilerworks

Retirement Project No. 5: Take advantage of the Energy Credit that pays 30% of installing certain high efficiency appliances up to a $1500 credit. In this old house there are plenty of candidates including our sparse insulation, leaky windows, and 20-year-old water heater. But most urgent is our antique boiler that serves our old-fashioned column radiators. The heat exchanger is quite corroded and therefore inefficient and vulnerable to leaking. I got a $13,500 bid for installing a qualifying high efficiency unit from the turn-key outfit in town. Gus said he could do it for $3,500 in parts by buying off the Internet but I don't have a high confidence level in that. Another outfit in town has yet to provide their proposal but they misidentified our system as a steam system - it's gravity feed hot water - so whatever they propose will be rejected. We are getting a fourth inspection Tuesday and I am hopeful they are qualified and competitive. Meanwhile I have done the annual homeowner maintenance that I last did four years ago including bleeding all the radiators and draining and recharging the expansion tank (the big Wizard of Oz looking vessel on the right).