Low Pressure: Utica Hot Water Boiler

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AndrewFixingMine

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Afternoon,

I cleaned my Utica Boiler (1980s?), burners (lots of rust), and letting air out of the radiators. (The unit supplies two floors from the basement.) The issue is that none of the second floor radiators release hot water when bled but only air. (They have improved in heating their rooms. The heat has gone from a quarter to half way up the tall cast iron radiators.) I'll include a photo of my system and believe the pressure is low but don't know how to increase the pressure of the system.

Thanks for your experiences, please ask any questions as I hope to help future Utica Boiler owners,

Andrew
 

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AndrewFixingMine

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As an experiment for a pressure increase/decrease I turned the pressure reducing value from one side to the other while the hot water boiler was not operating. Nothing occurred, is this a valid test on pressure movement?
 

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It looks like your system pressure ~5 psi or less, which is nowhere near enough. Even if it were a 1-floor system you'd normally be looking for 10-12 psi minimum. It needs to be set high enough to lift the water to the top radiator even without the circulators running.

Since the system is at low pressure now, don't add water before calculating the minimum pressure needed, and be sure to pre-charge the air side of the expansion tank to that pressure + 1 or 2 psi.

The minimum pressure would be either 12 psi, or 3 psi + 0.433 x the vertical distance between the top of the uppermost radiator and the pressure gauge in feet. eg:

Say it's a 3' tall radiator on the second floor, with 10' between floors, and the pressure gauge on the boiler is 6' below the first floor. That's 19 feet total, so you're looking at 3 psi + (19 x 0.433)= 11 psi.

That's probably OK when cold, but could be at risk of flash-boil kettling under some circumstance. Bump that up to 12 psi to avoid low-pressure "kettling" on the boiler when the pump is

If the 3' radiator is on a 3rd floor with 10' between floors it adds another 10' to the height for 29' total:

3 psi + (29 x 0.433)= 15.6 psi

So your going to need to pressurize the system to 15-16 psi. 12 psi won't lift water that far. Be sure to pre-charge the expansion tank to the correct pressure (~17 psi, in this last example, 14 psi in the first example) before adding water to the system.

It's possible that the Watts 1156F auto-fill valve in the picture is sticky, or perhaps there is an isolating valve keeping it from adding water to the system. If it is just the auto-fill valve sticking, lifting (rather than turning) the lever straight up will force it open, and it's fine to add water manually by lifting that lever if you keep an eye on the system pressure while doing it. If lifting the lever does't add water to the system the water feeding the auto-fill is turned off somewhere up stream.

Proceed a bit slowly- if the system goes over 30 psi at the boiler the pressure relief valve on the boiler will open up. Go ahead and pressurize the system, then bleed the top radiators. When starting with the pressure that low you may need to add more water to the system to restore the correct pressure after initially bleeding those radiators. It's possible/likely that opening the bleeder valves on the top floor radiators ADDED air to the system.
 

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BTW: A boiler with a DOE output of 134,000 BTU/hr is crazy-oversized for most homes in the US, and it looks like the steady state efficiency back when it was new was 134K/175K= 77% then, and is probably closer to 70% now. A name-plate steady state efficiency under 80% means it's probably older than the 1980s, but you can probably look it up by the model name and serial number (which I couldn't read in the picture.)

index.php


The as-used AFUE is almost certainly under 70% due to the oversize factor, which is probably more than 3x the heat loss of the house at the 99% outside design temperature of +2F in Kingston. (It's only colder than +2F for 1% of all hours over the past 25 years, or about 87-88hours in a typical year.) ASHRAE recommends holding the line at 1.4x oversizing as the best compromise on comfort & efficiency, but there's some wiggle-room. AFUE testing assumes a 1.7x oversize factor, and is usually within 1% of the steady-state efficiency.

To figure out your actual oversize factor, use fuel-use against heating degree day data from a nearby weather station between meter-reading dates on your wintertime-only gas bills, to estimate the design heat load @ +2F, using the 77% nameplate efficiency of the boiler. Details on how to do that live here. That will likely overshoot reality by a bit given the boiler's age and oversize factor, but it'll be in the right ball park. From there you can run other analysis on your radiation and zoning to come up with what a right-sized replacement boiler might be.

Some of these old cast iron boilers seem to never die (I know of one still in service that was installed in 1922) , but if you're in it for the longer term or for the comfort it's not necessarily the "right" thing to keep them going. Odds are pretty good you have sufficient radiation to make good use of a modulating condensing boiler that would burn between 1/2 to 2/3 of the gas every year while providing higher average comfort levels.
 

AndrewFixingMine

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Dana, wow did you supply the right information!

The boiler was used by the family in the Spring to warm a kiddie pool by using the pressure release valve when it was warm. So when we started using the system this October/November the pressure was super low.

Thus, when the boiler was off and cool at 100F we re-pressurized the system by using the water feed spigot that runs through the "working" pressure reducing valve. (All parts of the system are working!)

We opened the spigot, opened the pressure reducing valve, and let the system pressurize to 10psi. Then we bleed the radiator and kept increasing the system to 10psi. (I then emptied the old expansion tank of water by first turning off its supply and it simply emptied and let air in the spigot.)

The system is settled at 12psi off and goes to 15-18psi when operating at 140 to 180F.




As for an over-sized unit, we are sure the unit is too big. The unit fed two floors and an attic on a single loop circulation pump. The attic radiator was removed in 1995 apparently but the pipes are in the floors still cut off. Would you ever recommend a combi boiler that could replace both our hot water heater and boiler?

You're a truly helpful person!
 

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A combi unit requires the boiler to be kept hot all of the time so it can produce instant hot water as there's little to no actual storage of potable water in the tank. IMHO, not a great idea, especially with older units, and not so much with newer ones, either.

Most modern boilers can be cold started, so the better choice is to use an indirect water heater. That could sit all day with no use and not cool off enough to need the boiler to come on. Size it so that it will meet your biggest, fast draw, like filling a big soaking tub. They're really simple, and many of them have very long warranties.
 

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A low mass condensing combi boiler doesn't need to be kept hot, and has very low standby loss.

The biggest problem with low mass combi boilers (rather than simpler modulating heating-only boilers) is the fairly high minimum firing rates for that class of boiler, which can cause them to short-cycle on insufficient zone radiation. But that isn't necessarily a show-stopper on systems with high volume/mass radiators the way it is with low-mass fin-tube baseboard- with enough thermal mass it can have a sufficiently high minimum burn time that it can still run at super-efficient very low temperatures without short-cycling itself into an early grave. But you have to do at least the napkin math assessment.

It's important to do both the load math and the zone radiation math when looking at low-mass modulating boilers & combi boilers. Ideally the minimum-fire output of the boiler is well under half the heating load at the 99% outside design temperature, with enough radiation on the smallest zone to emit the full min-fire output at low enough temperatures to reap the condensing efficiency benefit.
 

AndrewFixingMine

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Appreciate the feedback! Would you have a product that you'd recommend based on experience and the data below? A guess is sufficient for us to use as a planning tool.

House: 1,600 Square Feet
House Shape: Square with a boiler in the basement center
House Setup: 4 equal sized bedrooms upstairs (12x12ft: 144sqft)
New York Winter Weather
Energy Efficient Windows Installed

More data needed?

Thanks for the dialogue!
 

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Things that could be useful for assessing this:

* The amount and type of radiation, broken down by zone, if zoned

* ZIP code for outside design temperature estimate. The 99% outside design temperatures f0r "New York Winter Weather" ranges from about +15F to about -5F, and it makes a difference.

*The fuel amounts and exact meter reading dates from last winter.

*The amount and type of wall & attic insulation (and basement wall insulation, if any- please specify.)

[edited to add]

A square footprint 800' + 800' house over an 800' full basement or crawlspace is a very efficient shape. It's basically a cube with a gabled or hipped/pyramid roof (or sometimes a flat roof), which has substantially less exterior surface area per square foot of conditioned space to lose heat from than a 1600' rancher over a 1600' basement. You're probably looking at less than 25,000 BTU/hr @ 0F outside, 70F inside for a 2x4 framed reasonably tight house with some fluff in the walls and at least 6" of attic insulation, even if the basement isn't insulated.

If it's on Long Island or Westchester with outside design temps in positive double digits the design condition load could be less than 20,000 BTU/hr. The fuel-use numbers would be pretty definitive.
 
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Dana

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I'm an idiot- I had previously already noted that you're in Kingston, where the 99% design temp is + 2F. The actual ZIP code is still useful for selecting the right weather station to compare heating degree-day data against.
 

AndrewFixingMine

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Dana, you're the smartest guy in the room :)

Zip Code: 12401

The exterior walls of the entire house are cement and brick with stucco. The bedrooms upstairs are insulated from each other (interior walls) by R20 as we "randomly used" the 4 bedrooms as we demolished each one for creative room styles over the years. The bedrooms are insulated from the attic by R15.

Read date
Days Read type Total kWh Delivery charges Supply charges Late payment charges Total charges
11/6/2019
29 Days Actual 430 $45.58 $20.16 $0.00 $65.33

10/8/2019
28 Days Actual 238 $32.81 $10.48 $0.00 $42.88

9/10/2019
32 Days Actual 213 $31.47 $12.11 $0.00 $43.17

8/9/2019
30 Days Actual 209 $31.58 $11.90 $0.00 $43.07

7/10/2019
30 Days Actual 217 $32.00 $12.50 $0.00 $44.09

6/10/2019
33 Days Actual 368 $40.09 $17.96 $0.00 $57.64

5/8/2019
30 Days Actual 345 $39.35 $15.12 $0.00 $54.06

4/8/2019
31 Days Actual 340 $38.30 $12.23 $0.00 $50.12

3/8/2019
29 Days Actual 391 $40.19 $20.00 $0.00 $59.78

2/7/2019
29 Days Actual 367 $38.21 $22.38 $0.00 $60.18

1/9/2019
33 Days Actual 343 $37.05 $24.12 $0.00 $60.76

12/7/2018
31 Days Actual 328 $36.34 $18.94 $0.00 $54.87

11/6/2018
28 Days Actual 201 $29.32 $10.22 $0.00 $39.13

10/9/2018
32 Days Actual 250 $31.57 $16.51 $0.00 $47.67

9/7/2018
30 Days Actual 409 $40.08 $26.70 $0.00 $66.37

8/8/2018
29 Days Actual 518 $45.80 $37.88 $0.00 $83.27

7/10/2018
29 Days Actual 414 $41.75 $26.72 $0.00 $68.06

6/11/2018
34 Days Actual 387 $40.28 $20.30 $0.00 $60.17

5/8/2018
29 Days Actual 358 $39.01 $13.82 $0.00 $52.42

4/9/2018
31 Days Actual 333 $38.37 $11.22 $0.00 $49.18

3/9/2018
30 Days Actual 334 $36.91 $27.72 $0.00 $64.23

2/7/2018
29 Days Actual 367 $38.41 $33.74 $0.00 $71.75

1/9/2018
31 Days Actual 474 $45.91 $31.62 $0.00 $77.13

12/9/2017
32 Days Actual 410 $41.82 $24.41 $0.00 $65.83

Keep asking for data please, I hope to provide it and build this thread for future users!
 

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The boiler's primary energy source is natural gas. The electric meter readings tell us nothing, the gas meter readings will tell us a lot. Only the wintertime meter readings matter.

How thick are those exterior masonry walls, from the interior paint to the exterior stucco? Is the "cement" poured concrete, concrete block, or something else? Is there an air gap/cavity between the cement wall and stucco or brick?

Without the dimensions and specific material of each layer it's hard to come up with an R-value / U-factor, but it's clearly not a very high performance wall for the climate. So while the house is an efficient shape, the lack of insulation on exterior wall makes it WAY lossier than a tight code-minimum house. Your new code-min windows could even be slightly less lossy per square foot than the walls, whereas a typical 2x4/R13 type exterior wall code min replacement windows would still be ~3x as lossy per square foot as the walls.

There are various ways to safely insulate most masonry houses, but the methods and costs vary depending on the particulars of the house. When rooms get gutted for creative renovation is an opportunity-moment for insulating the walls from the interior- it doesn't take a huge amount of insulation to improve both efficiency and comfort with all-masonry walls.

Describe the R20 partition walls between in more detail. Are the rooms on both sides of those walls heated?

There is probably room for more than R15 in the attic.

For yuks let's assume the walls and windows are both ~R3, or U0.33 (=0.33 BTU/hr per square foot per degree F temperature difference), and that it's a 28' x 28' x 28' cube from grade level to the attic floor. That would be about 800 square feet per side x 4 sides =3200' of exterior wall.

At 2F outdoors, 70F indoors there is a 68F temperature difference so the wall losses are about:

U0.33 x 68F x 3200'= 71,808 BTU/hr

Assume that with the attic air films, roof deck & roofing R, etc the ceiling's R-value works out to a true R15, not thermally broken by framing. Taht woudl be a U-factor of (1/R15=) U0.067. With 800 square feet of attic floor you're looking at ceiling losses of:

U0.067 x 68F x 800' = 3645 BTU/hr

Add it all up and you're looking a 75,453 BTY/hr plus air infiltration losses and below-grade wall and basement slab losses. The basement losses are probably 4000-5000 BTU/hr, so now the load is up to ~80,000 BTU/hr.

If the house is fairly tight (could be- especially if poured concrete) you'd be looking at something like 0.01-0.02 cfm (=0.6- 1.2 cubic feet per hour) per square foot of conditions floor area. Guesstimating on the high side that would be 1600' x 1.2 cfh= ~2000 cubic feet per hour. The specific heat of dry air by volume is about 0.018 BTU per cubic foot per degree F, so those infiltration losses would be about

2000cfh x 0.018 x 68F= ~2500 BTU/hr.

If the house is fairly drafty it could be twice that, call it 5000 BTU/hr

So the design condition heat load could in a realistic worst case be as high as 85,000 BTU/hr, but probably not a lot more, and certainly not twice that. The output of the boiler is 134K, and if the load is really as big as 85K that would be an oversize factor of only 134K/85K= ~1.6x, which wouldn't be terrible (even though the lossiness of a house like that would be pretty terrible, and easily improved.)

With the gas billing data we can compare the above WAG to fuel-use measured reality.
 

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Dana, you're correct, I visualized the gas consumption data then when downloading I didn't move the selector to "gas." Below is the natural gas usage and the house walls are poured concrete in the basement (9ft tall 12 inches wide) then red brick that is 10in wide it appears for two stories. The attic is a walk up with no heat but insulated with R15 from the second story. The exterior walls have no insulation to the rooms on the first or second story. The interior walls among the rooms have R20 (just in case we close a room off for storage).

Read Date & Days Read type Total therms Delivery charges Supply charges Late payment charges Total charges

12/9/2019 & 33 Days Actual 349 $71.78 $107.91 $0.00 $175.00
11/6/2019 & 29 Days Actual 134 $58.09 $32.46 $0.00 $87.59
10/8/2019 & 28 Days Actual 58 $49.18 $14.14 $0.00 $60.98
9/10/2019 & 32 Days Actual 25 $34.14 $6.84 $0.00 $39.91

8/9/2019 & 30 Days Actual 16 $28.99 $3.44 $0.00 $31.80
7/10/2019 & 30 Days Actual 23 $33.13 $5.58 $0.00 $37.74
6/10/2019 & 33 Days Actual 74 $51.16 $22.43 $0.00 $71.12
5/8/2019 & 30 Days Actual 128 $58.15 $43.95 $0.00 $99.19

4/8/2019 & 31 Days Actual 268 $71.68 $103.46 $0.00 $168.35
3/8/2019 & 29 Days Actual 377 $80.46 $144.59 $0.00 $215.61
2/7/2019 & 29 Days Actual 438 $86.46 $210.53 $0.00 $286.61
1/9/2019 & 33 Days Actual 395 $88.04 $231.02 $0.00 $309.35
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/7/2018 & 31 Days Actual 338 $74.82 $146.85 $0.00 $212.84
11/6/2018 & 28 Days Actual 174 $61.25 $67.24 $0.00 $122.19
10/9/2018 & 32 Days Actual 68 $50.27 $26.03 $0.00 $71.64
9/7/2018 & 30 Days Actual 23 $32.98 $8.59 $0.00 $39.70

8/8/2018 & 29 Days Actual 23 $32.97 $8.32 $0.00 $39.42
7/10/2018 & 29 Days Actual 26 $34.72 $11.19 $0.00 $43.77
6/11/2018 & 34 Days Actual 65 $51.40 $33.07 $0.00 $79.86
5/8/2018 & 29 Days Actual 185 $60.53 $94.87 $0.00 $148.93

4/9/2018 & 31 Days Actual 327 $69.31 $164.67 $0.00 $231.47
3/9/2018 & 30 Days Actual 311 $72.37 $153.85 $0.00 $226.22
2/7/2018 & 29 Days Actual 377 $76.15 $161.00 $0.00 $237.15
1/9/2018 & 31 Days Actual 483 $77.86 $188.64 $0.00 $266.50

On a side note the boiler is running great. When off it is 12psi at 140F and 16-18psi when 160-175F running. That was an adventure to get going but very educational :)

We keep the house at 70F and the family uses no external heat sources to compensate in their rooms. (A perfect setup would be to remove the low hanging black iron pipes and raise them one day, any suggestions there would be appreciated. Could copper replace them if funds allow?)
 

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If it's kept 70F indoors most of the time the following would be somewhat valid using base 65F heating degree days. If it were significantly cooler indoors it would have to be re-calculated using a different heating degree base temperature.

So, it looks like between 7 December and 8 March you used 395 + 438 + 377 = 1210 therms. Using base 65F heating degree day data from weather station KPOU (in Poughkeepsie) they logged 3130 HDD over that period.

That's a ratio of 1210/3130= 0.38659 therms per degree-day, or 38,658 BTU/degree-day.

The nameplate indicates 175,000 BTU/hr in, 134,000 BTU/hr out, which would be (134/175=) 76.6% efficiency. Assuming it's still getting 77% efficiency (could be optimistic, but many old cast iron boilers still deliver close to that), that would be 0.766 x 38,658 BTU= 29,612 BTU/degree day.

In a 24 hour day that would be 30,926/ 24 hours= 1234 BTU per degree-hour.

The 99% outside design temp is +2F, the presumptive heating/cooling balance point is 65F (the heating degree base temp), so you're looking at 65F -2F= 63F heating degrees. The implied heat load is then

1234 BTU per degree-hour x 63F heating degrees= 77,742 BTU/hr

@ 2F outside, 68-70F indoors (within 10% of my WAG crude heat load calculation in response #13.)

Going by the ASHRAE recommendations the "ideal" cast iron boiler serving that load would have a DOE output of 1.4 x 77,742 BTU/hr= 108,839 BTU/hr, but with a modulating condensing boiler you'd still do just fine with a 1.2x oversize factor, or 1.2 x 77,742 BTU/hr=93,290 BTU/hr.

Those are still pretty big numbers for a house that size, and insulating the walls wherever/whenever possible would make a huge difference.

The current boiler has a DOE output of 134,000 BTU/hr, so your oversize factor is only 134,000/77,742= ~ 1.72x, which is almost exactly the AFUE test presumption, so whatever it's steady state combustion efficiency is (76.6% according to the nameplate) will be within 1% of it's as-used AFUE.

If replacing the boiler there are several decent and not crazy-expensive modulating condensing boilers in 110-120,000 BTU/hr (input) range out there that would be appropriate, which could cut your gas use by 20% or more. If you upgraded the thermal performance of the house with air sealing and insultation you'd be more comfortable, and could go even smaller.
 

AndrewFixingMine

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Dana, wow, you sure can explain items and jargon in a digestible manner! I've shown a friend your detailed analysis (he's sure you're a professor) and we concluded this summer might be a great time to upgrade or install a newer system. I'll be following up with a question or two over time if ok. Our family truly appreciates the help and analysis!
 

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Dana, wow, you sure can explain items and jargon in a digestible manner! I've shown a friend your detailed analysis (he's sure you're a professor) and we concluded this summer might be a great time to upgrade or install a newer system. I'll be following up with a question or two over time if ok. Our family truly appreciates the help and analysis!

He should talk to my wife, who is pretty sure I'm an idiot (and she's probably right! :) )

Making the place more comfortable efficient is more than just upgrading the heating system. The low thermal performance of the exterior walls make it "seem" colder than the room's air temperature actually is. Addressing the worst aspects of the building is where to spend the first and biggest money. Though installing a right-sized modulating condensing boiler would have a bigger and more immediate return on investment from an energy use point of view, the typical service life is 20-25 years, whereas insulating the walls could be good for 100+ years, and raises the comfort levels immediately.

With as little as R10 continuous insulation on the walls the interior surfaces of the walls will stay north of 60F even when it's 0F outside. Right now the walls probably hit 60F or lower when it's 30F outside, and that's something that you can feel on your face with your eyes closed. It's sort of the opposite of a radiator, which you can also feel from several feet away with your eyes closed when it's actually heating. The "mean radiant temperature" (MRT) of the room has a large effect on comfort levels independent of the air temperature of the room, though both are important.

In order of relative bang/buck:

1: Air sealing (particularly the attic floor and foundation walls) is cheap, and reduces outdoor air infiltration by killing off "stack effect" drives. In your climate that increases the indoor air's humidity in winter (by sucking in less super-dry cold outdoor air) and lowers the indoor humidity in summer (by sucking in less hot sticky air.)

2: Exterior wall insulation (could be expensive on a concrete building unless done during major rehab projects), to raise the MRT in winter, lower it in summer, for more even temperatures over the course of the day. This will also have a large effect on the fuel bill, and lower the size of the mechanical systems needed to heat/cool the place.

__2a: Bring the attic insulation up to the current R49 code minimum, or close to it, if you can. (There may be roof clearance issues at the edges.) This will improve summertime comfort on the top floor, and lower both the heating and cooling energy use by a bit.

__2b: Insulate the exterior basement walls to the current IRC code minimum (=R15 continuous insulation). This is only because it's usually easier to retrofit-insulate an unfinished basement than in the fully finished living space above. The effect on comfort is more subtle- a slightly warmer floor on the first floor, but the effect on the heating bill is bigger than most people realize, especially after the upper floors already have wall insulation.

3: Right-size a modulating-condensing replacement boiler. This keeps temperatures from overshooting the setpoints, and keeps room temperatures more stable in winter, and would likely save at least 25% on the heating bills even if you skipped #1 & #2. If buying a fire-tube type with a 10:1 turn down ratio it's fine to size it for the existing heat load, before upgrades, but keep the oversize factor as low as possible, or even slightly undersize for the present loads of the house where-is-as-is, if planning to start executing on #1 & #2 within a couple of years.

4: Upgrade the windows. Code-min replacement windows are expensive, and the "payoff" on fuel savings is essentially "never", but the upgrade in comfort from lower drafts and moderating the MRT is noticable. But tight low-E storm windows over reasonably tight (or re-worked & weatherstripped) antique wood sash single panes are a fraction of the price, and will bring the thermal & comfort performance to a very comparable level. (Tightest storms in the biz are Harvey's Tru-Channel, and they do have a hard coat Low-E option. But Larson's Low-E storms sold through box stores aren't bad, and are better now than what they offered a decade ago.)

There may be NYSERDA programs or other subsidies available for some of this work, which may affect the order in which you take it on, but don't let subsidies steer it too much. Air sealing is usually WELL worth it, subsidized or not.
 
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AndrewFixingMine

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Perhaps your wife isn't talking about heating solutions haha! Ok, I've decided to go after sealing the basement first with low cost solutions to start. I'll report the gas usage in the future as I stumble down your list :)

I'm sure the weather affects the gas cost the most from year to year but perhaps a meaningful airsealing and insulation will show some nice cost savings!
 

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Many times, your utility company will do some testing and may do some of this work for you for free. Call them, or check their website. My mother lived in upstate, and they did what would have cost over $4K worth of work on her home for free after I did the paperwork for her utility company for her. They foam sealed the rim joist, added insulation in the attic while air sealing, and replaced all of her incandescent bulbs with LEDs for no out of pocket costs. Some of that was based on her age and income level, but some level of this is available to everyone.
 
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