Boiler

Tri-City Heating & Cooling offers you the premier heating and cooling services in Milford, CT and the surrounding Fairfield County area. We serve locations from Stamford to New London. Today we’re happy to offer you some advice on hot to choose a boiler for your heating systems.

Oil Boilers

An oil boiler uses a product called heating oil, a petroleum product that is, as its name suggests, primarily used for heating buildings only. Oil boilers are fairly common in New England, and we see a lot of them in our work. Tri-City Heating & Cooling offers services for a variety of major oil boiler models. While there is a misconception that oil boilers are less efficient than gas boilers for heating, the truth is that a properly maintained oil boiler is very efficient. However, heating oil is “dirtier” than natural gas, and a heating oil system requires cleaning each season to remove residues from the nozzle, burn chamber, and fuel lines. In addition, oil must be periodically delivered to you and put in your tank.

Gas Boilers

Natural gas boilers are a common alternative for oil boilers. They require maintenance less often, and in some cases where gas pipes exist in the area, they do not require a tank on-premises for fuel storage as oil does. However, natural gas does not consistently offer a better price than oil, another common misconception, and it is slightly more dangerous to use since natural gas can explode on contact with air, whereas oil boilers need to aerosolize the oil before it will burn, meaning that a fuel oil spill is much less likely to cause injury than a natural gas lea.

Wood Pellet Boilers

Wood pellet boilers are also popular in the New England area, particularly since the increasing cost of fossil fuels makes fossil-fueled heating systems less affordable every year. Wood pellets are a very clear-burning and environmentally friendly fuel. However, they take up a great deal of space, and few homes are equipped with a heating system that can accommodate a wood pellet boiler. Because of the nature of solid fuel heating, wood pellet boilers are less responsive than oil and gas boilers, and will take longer to change temperatures as the needs of the heating system change.

All of these boiler options are feasible to varying degrees for most Southern Connecticut homes and businesses. We at Tri-City Heating & Cooling are experts in all kinds of boilers, and we will be happy to talk with you about your boiler and answer any questions you may have about it. We offer heating and cooling services including regularly scheduled maintenance and repair service plans to help you keep your system in top-notch condition throughout the heating season.