Replacing a boiler is not the same job as swapping a furnace, and it should not be quoted like one. Your radiators, baseboard and in-floor loops stay. The boiler gets sized to the house, derated for altitude, and priced flat-rate before anything starts. You call, you get Erica or Jared, not a call center.
Not there yet? A lot of boilers are worth repairing, and we will tell you when yours is.
Cast iron boilers regularly run 25 to 40 years, so age by itself is not a verdict, and we repair far more of them than we replace. These are the six situations where replacement genuinely wins, and if none of them describe your boiler you should be getting it repaired instead.
Nearly everything else on a boiler is a replaceable part. The heat exchanger is the boiler. When it cracks or corrodes through, repair stops being an option and the conversation becomes which replacement makes sense for the house.
One repair on an old boiler is usually worth doing. The third one in two winters, on a unit burning gas at sixty-something percent, is money spent to keep an expensive appliance alive. We show you both numbers rather than deciding for you.
Boilers were often sized generously decades ago, and homes have been insulated and re-windowed since. An oversized boiler short cycles, which wastes gas and wears the parts that fail first. Replacement is the only point at which this gets fixed.
An old atmospheric boiler with a standing pilot burns fuel year round and runs well below what current equipment does. It may work perfectly and still be the most expensive thing in the basement.
If the loops are already being opened up for a basement finish, an addition or a new zone, that is the cheapest moment to deal with a boiler that is near the end. The labor overlaps instead of happening twice.
Heating season is when repairs cannot wait. The warm months are when replacements happen on your schedule, with time to compare options, instead of during an outage in February with the house at fifty degrees.
It starts with a heat loss calculation, not with the number stamped on the old boiler. Plenty of boilers in these neighborhoods were sized generously decades ago, and the houses have been insulated and re-windowed since. Copying the old rating forward just repeats someone else's mistake for another thirty years. Sizing is the one decision on a boiler job you cannot revisit later without buying another boiler.
Your emitters stay. Radiators, baseboard and in-floor loops routinely outlive two boilers, so a replacement reuses what is already in the house and the work concentrates on the boiler and the near-boiler piping. That piping is where a lot of installs quietly go wrong: get the pumping, the expansion tank and the air separation right and the system is quiet and even, get it wrong and you get noise, cold zones and a boiler that short cycles no matter how good it is.
Then it gets derated and set for the air it is actually breathing. Gas combustion has to be adjusted for Front Range elevation, exactly like a furnace. A boiler left on sea-level factory settings still runs, which is precisely why it gets skipped, and it burns rich and soots the heat exchanger for as long as nobody checks.
Rated 5.0 on Google. These two are heating installs.
Jared installed my furnace and did a spectacular job! Pricing was clear and fair, competitive with other quotes. I appreciate his attention to detail and that he took the time to show me all of the features of our new system.
Since 2011, Jared has installed six furnaces, three air conditioner units and handled HVAC repairs at my rental houses. He continues to be my go-to, and I'd recommend him.
Atlas Mechanical covers the south Denver metro plus the north and west side: Lone Tree, Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock, Parker, Centennial, Littleton, Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Arvada, Golden, Evergreen and the surrounding communities listed below. That includes Lone Tree, Parker and Castle Rock neighborhoods like Carriage Club, Heritage Hills, Meridian and Castlewood. We are based in Lone Tree and out across the metro daily. If you are close by, call or text (303) 601-1444 and we will get you scheduled.
Call or text and you get Erica or Jared, not a call center. Same-day service when the schedule allows, and a flat-rate price before anything starts.
