Our 1963 house was equipped with an oil-burning boiler/furnace built in 1997. While the system worked fine, it was clearly not the most efficient. So, with the price of fuel rising, we wanted to modernize our heating and warm water production, preferably without a “paradigm switch”.
Currently the best technology available for our requirements comes in the form of an exhaust-energy recapturing, condensing burner, a 1,000 liter hot water buffer tank, and an indirect water heater.
The project started on a Monday morning at 7:00 a.m. Half a dozen men worked fulltime to remove the old boiler, drain all water out of our over 20 radiators, reroute water pipes, install a new exhaust and air-intake line into the old chimney, put in the new boiler, add the buffer tank and fresh-water indirect heater.

They had to shut down the water in our house multiple times, sometimes for hours, and we had to take cold showers for four days.
Finally, Friday afternoon around 2:00 p.m., everything was in place. We received a thorough explanation of the technology, how to do regular maintenance, how to program the system, and a lot of information about the benefits and improvements we will experience over time.

The one question, that I am most interested to finding the answer for, is: how will it affect our oil consumption? In the past two years we used about 4,000 liters of heating oil annually. I’ll keep an eye on that.