Heating Help

Richardson and Boynton Number 6

Anyone know how to clean out the bottom section of this Richardson boiler.
There is a plate you can remove to clean out the top but that is it.
Iwill need to get at least three more years out of this boiler and I am sick of freezing my but off in the winter and spending a forutune on oil.
Thanks

What do you mean by 'lower'?

Could you post a few pics?  If you mean where the lower heat exchanger ring is?  If I'm thinking of the right one, (old coal fired beast converted to oil?), you can open that middle door and practically stick your whole head in there.  You could pull the burner (note the insertion depth), put the vaccum below, go into the middle inspection door with a brush and brush down.  That ought to get you from about 48% efficient to 55.
I know you need to eek out a few more years, but did you try to do an accurate cost analysis of replacing, with the fuel savings, and more importantly comfort.  Your efficiency is so low that half the money you spend on oil is going up the chimney.  And most oil companies will help you finance, plus possible rebates etc., for your area.  If you're burning say 1000 gallons a year, and are uncomfortable, in 3 years you could easily save 2-3 thousand dollars. Even more if you're using it for domestic hot water.

Yes, post pics of the boiler

also, is this a steam or hot-water system? 

FYI

With the price of fuel going up, I'd recheck your figures on keeping it running verse replacing. In the 3 years time, you may pay off a big chunk of your investment...and be warm to boot..

1927

Ill get the pictures but it will take time. The burner has cat iron tubes arched over it. I dout  it was ever made to burn coal. The house was built in 1927.

If that was the original boiler

it was almost certainly coal-fired when it was first installed. Waiting for the pics.

haventseenenough

try filling the old coal chamber with vermiculite and a kaowool blanket. I'm guessing this was a wet leg boiler, and fire the boiler thru the stoker door.

Mind boggling

I find it mind boggling that this is a topic of discussion when oil is $4/gallon.

and maybe dangerous to boot

If the boiler crapped out this winter, you would have no choice.  Mad Dog

pictures

Here are the pictures. If I remove the plate to clean out the top there are two rows of tubes that run from front to back. The middle of the two rows runs back to the stack that goes to the cimney. The back of the left and right of the tubes drops down to the bottom and the heat comes up from the back of the two sides. The bottom right picture shows the tubes that are right over the flame of the burner. How do you clean every thing from there? Ther has to be a place for the heat to get from the combustion chamber to the top where the plate can be removed to clean out the tubes up top.
O yea its hot water

Might have to pull the burner mounting plate

I don't see any other way of getting in there, unless there's a hatchway that doesn't show in the pics.

That looks like a rather large boiler. Unless you live in a correspondingly large house, it's almost certainly oversized, and therefore you should consider replacing it. And if it's difficult to clean, it will never be cleaned properly and will always waste fuel, which would also be a good reason to replace it.

Have a heat-loss calculation done on your house. This will tell you where you stand on that issue.

There

is nothing you could do to that to make any appreciable difference in fuel consumption

nm