Hello there,
I recently purchased a house built in 1926 which is heated by a Fitzgibbons Oil Eighty oil-fired boiler (circa 1930s/1940s). At some point, the original burner was replaced with a Beckett AFG MP1192 oil burner (3 GPH), and the unit vents to an adjacent chimney stack. The draft control regulator was modernized as well. The water temp in the hydronic system is set for around 170 F. The previous owner would burn about 260 gallons of heating oil a month to keep the house warm during the winter months.
I am in the process of having natural gas service installed to the house, and will be doing away with the heating oil system altogether. However, perhaps for sentimental/historic reasons, I would like to try and preserve the old Fitzgibbons and integrate it into the heating system. Before settling down I worked on steam ships and shipboard incinerators, so it would be a fun project not too out of my depth.
The existing burner is bolted to a custom skid, and is inserted into the firebox at the base of the unit. It appears that physical removal and installation of a new burner wouldn't be too technically involved, hence why they had updated it previously. My experience with natural gas burners is limited, hence why I pose the following questions to you top minds:
1) Plain and simple, is a conversion of this sort feasible or just plain ridiculous?
2) What infrastructure would need to be updated as well? I already anticipate needing to run a chimney liner/B-vent down the length of the stack. What considerations for drafting and backdraft need to be taken with natural gas burners?
3) How would one calculate the appropriate size of a natural gas burner in terms of BTU output? What are the dangers/problems of oversizing/undersizing a natural gas burner?
Thanks much for your advice and opinions on this project. Let me know if there is any other information I can provide.
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