Cast iron boiler

oikster

How efficient or inefficient could an old cast iron sectional boiler be and what can be done to improve on its heating capabilities.

shane0007

oikster wrote: »

How efficient or inefficient could an old cast iron sectional boiler be and what can be done to improve on its heating capabilities.

You can achieve quite high combustion efficiencies with CI boilers because the CI will absorb a high amount of the heat from the combustion chamber. Generally, combustion efficiencies of circa 85 - 89% on standard efficiency boilers.
Another upside is they are fairly bullet proof as long they are not affected by thermal shock on the return. They will last a lifetime & more if they are looked after.
The down side is they have a poor seasonal efficiency because they are poor at transferring that heat from the CI into the heating system itself. The other downside is they are slow to transfer heat into the heating system, and unless they are wired with pump over-run, the stored heat is lost once the boiler shuts down.

oikster

Thanks Shane. Its just that I removed one from rather large property recently and did not want to scrap it. I was really thinking of converting it it solid fuel and using it to heat a greenhouse (which may never be built). Does this make any sense seeing as it would not be used too often. It is rated somewhere in around 80kw.