Hi, I'm new here and this page was recommended to me. We just bought a home in the Boston area and replaced the 40 year old boiler as recommended by Mass Save. We actually left for a 2.5 week vacation with the heat on at 60 and came back to a cold house. The old boiler turned off for some reason, so I'm kinda glad that we got a new one.
The house is a 1980 2,000SF contemporary with high ceilings and 3 heating zones: main (living room/foyer, formal dining room, guest bed, 1st floor bathroom, front door), upstairs (3 bedrooms and 1.75 bath) and kitchen (kitchen, laundry/mud room, half bath, informal dining area). It's gas heat with baseboards. The windows are new. According to Mass Save, our walls should have insulation since it was built in 1980.
The new system is a Navien 210E high efficiency (95% rating) combi boiler/hot water heater with indirect storage tank SSU-30. The plumber noted that upon start up, combustion sequence was 0.17 for test and then tapered down to 0.09. I also installed 3 Nest E thermostats.
I set the temp to 70 when home and 68 when away. When first installed, the boiler took a long time to heat up the house but I found out that is normal. It would take hours to go from 60 to 70 degrees. But once it's at 70 degrees, the main and upstairs zones are great. However the kitchen is always heating up. It would be stuck at 68 or 69 and take all day to reach 70. I have eco mode set to 68 so it should never dip below that. I believe the plumber set the temperature to 155 degrees (default is 140) to try to help the kitchen heat up.
Usage for the past 4 days:
Main: No usage, 30min, no usage, 6 hours
Upstairs: 2 hours, 15min, no usage, 5.5 hours
Kitchen: 13.5 hours, 16 hours, 19.75 hours, 22 hours
I expect the kitchen to be the coldest area, since it connects to the mud room and garage. The garage is not insulated and the door actually leaves a half inch gap from the ground, so it's basically wide open. The door from the garage to the mud room is just wood with metal sheet on the back. I can feel drafts coming from that door and another exterior door in the mud room. This is the coldest room in the house, however with the old boiler it would still be piping hot when we walked into the house. I do feel a bit of heat coming out of the baseboard in this room, but the room remains cold most of the time - I'm actually glad we're not wasting much heat in this room though. The half bath that connects to this room is nice and warm, we keep its door closed.
On the other side of the kitchen zone is a sliding glass door. There is a metal grate with baseboard heat in the floor near the sliding glass door. I know this is a source of heat loss, but the living room has sliding glass doors as well and does not have an issue. With the old boiler, the kitchen tile floors would be warm but now they are cold. There are not many baseboards in the kitchen area with the cabinets and appliances are.
Does this sound like just a matter of poor insulation in the kitchen area? I don't understand how the rest of the house can have no gas usage on the same day that the kitchen burns gas for 19.75 hours. With the old boiler, the kitchen area would be very hot and toasty. Now it struggles to maintain 70 degrees.
Our first heating bill with the old boiler was almost $500 and nearly gave me a heart attack. Hoping it's significantly lower next month.
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