A Toast, To Jimmy

In the summer of 1974 I was working my way through college as a master control technician at the public television station in Pensacola, Florida.  This was a long, long time ago in TV years, back when it took two people to run a master control room at a small town TV outlet.  It wasn't hard work.  It did require a brief period of concentration, especially since the various video tape segments within it all had to be rolled 10 seconds before they were aired and the "technical director" (the person doing the source video switching) was simultaneously mixing the sound, inserting audio tags and voice overs while watching the video monitors to make sure the picture finally became stable before switching the next segment to air.  Switching television is a bit like tennis - a lot of concentration, some fast action to get in position and then a slower, carefully placed swing, right back into into fast again; repeat.

While I was beginning a station break one afternoon, I felt a change in my lighting and knew someone was standing behind me, really close behind me, watching my every move. Absorbed in the timing of the switching and other requirements, I didn't look around, but drilled into the routine of calling the tape rolls, watching the monitors and the clock, running the VOs and switching the video and audio sources as I plowed through the two minute local station break.  I knew I had a live TV audience and I didn't want to blow up a break in front of a live witness as well. (It's obvious to the TV viewers, of course, but they are intangible.)

I made it through the station ID and hit the network spot on, took a breath and turned around to see who was in my bubble.

Standing directly behind me was a short man with a good haircut and a gentle, amiable expression of genuine interest in what he'd just observed.  Frank, my tape operator on duty, had been watching him the whole time with a half smile on his face (I could see Frank since the five refrigerator-sized video tape machines were across the control room in front of me).  The fellow looked well kept; he was wearing a very nicely cut dark blue suit with a starched white shirt and a red 'power tie.'  His shoes were shined, but not new. He seemed comfortable in them.

Before I could say a word, he thrust out his right hand and said, "Hi.  My name's Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president."

I took his hand and replied, "That's great.  Of what, exactly?"

* Summer in Perth and A Maritime History of Australia

I had the good fortune to be able to live for a short while in Perth, Australia a few years ago, in a home I rented from a gentleman and his wife who used it when he spent several months a year there as a member of the Western Australian  parliament.  It was (and still is) a remarkable place, with "Australian mahogany" Jarrah wood floors and a big patio overlooking the Swan River.  Only a block up the hill on Mount Street from the central business district, the home felt quite private, with citrus trees in the front garden.  I could walk another block up Mount Street to King's Park and its 1100 acres of nature preserve.  I lived there for months without ever getting into a car.  My next door neighbors were two of the nicest people I've ever met - staunch political conservatives, of course, to afford the neighborhood - who introduced me to their circle of friends, a diverse set of remarkable people.  Now, I still had long hair back then, well down my back, and I worked as a volunteer in an Oxfam shop downtown, unpacking boxes of stuff made by Oxfam's many hand-craft industry co-ops in India, Pakistan, Africa and other places, so the cultural acceptance of these folks was unexpected after life in the USA.  (One of the highlights of my time in Perth was a party I gave on Australia Day 2003, when my "Oxfam hippie" friends from work and my neighbor's mining industry, senior government and university faculty friends (and since no party is complete without a bagpiper in full kilt, they had one, too) all bridged the so-called "Gulfs of Age and Ideology" as we watched the fireworks together and shared a really grand evening on our adjoining patios.  Australia's ideological gulfs just aren't nearly as deep as those we swim in here.)

The home came fully furnished with much finer things than I've lived with before or since; the general house inventory list provided by the rental agent was over 30 pages long (I still have it somewhere) and included two complete sterling silver tea services, a shop-full of English bone chinaware, antique brass beds and an unmentionable (in terms of investment) amount of quite good original art and sculpture.  And books.  A small library's worth of books, many of which I read in the mornings before walking downtown to open boxes in the back room of a small charity shop.  One in particular (that the owner later told me he considered a "shelf stuffer" - an old economics textbook from his college days) was, to me, especially enjoyable.  "A Maritime History of Australia," by John Bach, "describes the sea-borne trade to and from Australia from around 1788 to 1974, which covers the years of European settlement."  It is the only book I have ever seriously considered stealing and, since it wasn't on the inventory specifically, I could have, since it would not have been missed; I know this since I mentioned my close brush with larceny to the owners after coming back to the States and was told I should have, since they were running out of room for "good" books..  I didn't though and I am only looking through it again this evening since it was delivered to me by the home's owners, when they traveled 12,000 miles to the USA in 2006 and gave it to me during a brief visit with me in Colorado.  It's remains one of my cherished possessions.

Why?

Among other attributes, the book contains a lengthy summary of ships logs from various periods and includes a detailed description of the voyages of a 135 tonne brig registered in Sydney between 1845-46.  During this year, the Emma was commanded by her part-owner, "Captain Fox," and Bach's description of Emma's adventures in the onshore trade between Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, based upon the Captain Fox's logs and diaries provides a detailed, clear and delightful insight into life at sea at the height of the great "tall ship" and dawn-of-steam power era.  It's an era I truly wish I had lived within but, since I was born on the cusp of peak oil production, I missed it and won't live to see it return. It will return sooner than later as the planet returns to a solar powered life.

An excerpt from Bach's work:  "One of the most interesting things to emerge from a study of Fox's dairies is the number of other vessels he passed during his voyages.  In the decade before the goldrush, it is clear, there was very active shipping trade around the southeastern corner of the Australian continent.  For a two-month period in 1846 Fox remained in Sydney to get married, spend his honeymoon at Watson's Bay and to arrange accommodation. For three weeks in April and early May the shorebound mariner sat with his wife on the cliffs above Watson's Bay, in a shelter of rocks near the Inner South Head, and he recorded most if not all of the shipping movements in and out of the harbour. It is a veritable catalogue, enlarged day by day."

"For Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) there sailed the Louisa, the steamer Shamrock, later to be forced back  by a southerly gale, the Calypso, the John, the Waterlily, the Catherine and the William.  In the Port Phillip and Adelaide trade he noted the Dorset, Emma, Mary White, Christina, Palmyra, Vanguard, Martha and Elizabeth, and the Coquette.  Overseas ships included the Saint Vincent from London in 130 days, the brig Giraffe from China and the Governor from Manilla, the British barque Sussex, the Constant for Hong Kong, and the Midlothian and Royal Saxon, as well as to barques taking horses to India.  Several other ships, including whalers, were seen to depart to the south seas."

"Even Fox, experienced mariner though he was, became excited at the sight of so many ships, and on one beautiful day in late April, as he sat with his new wife at South Head, he tried to convey his impression in the following passage:

    'Before us lay the boundless Pacific Ocean now indeed deserving the name, 'deeply, darkly, beautifully blue' from the horizon's clearly defined verge, to the breakers against the perpendicular cliffs immediately beneath our feet.

    Scattered over its slightly rippled surface the meridian sun shining in slendour on their white canvas were seven sail visible of all the various sizes, from the tiny cutter to the 700-tonne ships.

     Three of them (Barques) had left the port this morning, the Constant for Hong Kong, Midlothian for London and Mary for New Zealand.

     It was interesting to see them slowly moving away from the land on their different courses, till they appeared as mere specks on the horizon, and we were led almost involuntarily to exclaim 'how wonderful in its simplicity is that science which guides each of these ships to her far distant haven through such a trackless unmarked space.''"

"How wonderful in its simplicity is that science which guides each of these ships to her far distant haven through such a trackless unmarked space."  Indeed, Captain Fox, indeed.

* Tattoos

My oldest daughter, who ran with the early ‘punk/boarder’ crowd, is now in her 30’s. Like many in her generation, she was and is "into tattoos" and recently told me, again, that they’re her form of self expression, "just like writing is yours, dad." We have had several discussions about tattoos over the years, but she really never "won" one of them, in my 'dad-opinion' of course, until that last observation and correlation was pointed out.

Scary.

Blogging, writing occasional OpEds for the local paper, dropping a comment below an online news item, posts on FaceBook and other social networking places; even just sending emails in a world where every expression of self will live forever, really is electronic tattooing. It's fun, if you're into it, but the net result can't be positive, since one's contributions are fixed in time and people change. And God only know's what's in the ink.

I've been "online" since before the 'Net was browser-capable, thanks to a friend and fellow broadcast engineer who introduced me to early "BBS" systems and the text-based Internet back in the 1980's. Computing itself, at the personal level, was brand new in those days and the ability to network was simply amazing to me then.

The older I get, though, the weirder life becomes.  I'm not sure if all this online stuff is worth a damn anymore.

* DC-10 Engines Really DID Suck

Back in the 1990's when I was flying around the world a lot - three weeks out of four, typically - bringing the Internet to Africa, Asia, Eastern Russia (Siberia) and other far-flung places, the Douglas DC-10 was the business traveller's least favorite ride, for a lot of reasons.  mostly, they were rattletraps with poor ventilation, and there was always a horrible vibration on takeoff due to what pilots told me was, "an 'acceptable' amount of unbalance in the engines."  This was further explained as something "caused by parts of the compressor fan blades breaking off over time, a known issue."

Today, this from the FAA, 15 years later:

Washington (CNN) -- The failure of General Electric engines on four jet aircraft overseas during the past two years has prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to issue an "urgent" recommendation to increase inspections of the engines on U.S. aircraft.

None of the incidents resulted in crashes, injuries or fatalities. But in all four cases, engine parts penetrated the engine housing.

Such "uncontained engine failures" are particularly dangerous because flying engine parts could puncture fuel or hydraulic lines, damage flight surfaces or even penetrate the fuselage and injure passengers.

At issue are General Electric CF6-45/50 series jet engines, older engines found on a small number of jets.
FAA officials said 373 of the engines are in service in the United States, on a fewer, but unknown, number of planes. The engines are used on some Airbus A300s, Boeing 747s, DC-10s, MD-10s and U.S. Air Force KC-10s.

The Hologram

Via: Joe Bageant:

Ahhhh … Safely in the American national illusion, where all the world’s a shopping expedition. Or a terrorist threat. No matter, as long as it is colorful and wiggles on the theater state’s 400 million screens. Plug in and be lit up by the American Hologram.

This great loom of media images, and images of images, is so many layers deep that it has replaced reality. No one can remember the original imprint. If there was one. The hologram is a hermetic snow globe, a self-referential circuitry of images, and a Möbius loop from which there is no logical escape. Logic has zilch to do with what is going on. The smallest part holographically recapitulates the whole, and vice versa. No thinking required, we just cycle and recycle through an aural dimension. Not all that bad, I guess, if it were not generated by forces out to fuck every last pair of eyeballs and mind plugged into it.

The investing class has put thousands of billions into movies, TV and other media to keep the hologram lit up over the past six decades. Which is to say, keep the public in an entertained stupor, awed, mislead, and most importantly, distracted. But the payoff probably runs in the trillions.

For the clear-eyed citizen, there is a growing inner horror and despair in all this, with nowhere to turn but the Internet. The Net is a cyber reality, no more real than the hologram, and indeed a part of the hologram, though not quite yet absorbed and co-opted by capitalism. We take what relief we can find.

However, for the unquestioning rest, the hologram, taken in its entirety, constitutes the American collective consciousness. Awareness. It enshrouds every citizen, defining through its permeation the daily world in which we all operate. Whether we love or hate it, there is no escape.

Cell Phones Don't Cause Brain Cancer Unless They Do

The largest study to date of the safety of mobile phones has found no clear link to brain cancer, although it said further study is merited given their increasingly intensive use.

"The study doesn't reveal an increased risk, but we can't conclude that there is no risk because there are enough findings that suggest a possible risk," the study's chief author, Elisabeth Cardis, told AFP.

Huh?

* Natural Gas - The Short-term Solution For Problems We Cause?

Long relegated to special-interest Peak Oil web sites, more data indicating that the end of oil's reign as the world's energy source is at hand hits the media each day now.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA), predicts that "global natural gas consumption will treble by 2030, when gas will become the primary energy source for industrial and public needs." Given oil's present rate of decline, it will be the only fossil energy source left for these applications. According to the Dow Jones Newswire, "Companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp.,Royal Dutch Shell PLC and ConocoPhillips are making the transition from dealing mostly in oil, a commodity that's increasingly scarce and difficult to produce, to natural gas, a fuel that's suddenly become ubiquitous. Their profits, which can reach unfathomably high levels during good times, are likely to go down accordingly, executives and analysts say. So will the companies' adventurous ventures in the deep waters and in dangerous regions of the globe. The industry now needs to learn the shale gas business, which has played a major role in spurring the transition and which can only be profitable if it runs like an assembly line. "It's a manufacturing industry, and it's not at all what we're doing at Total, " said Patrick Pouyanne, senior vice president for strategy business development at Total S.A., which recently entered into a shale gas joint venture in the U.S. and is acquiring shale positions in France, Denmark, Argentina and North Africa."

The observation by Total that natural gas "can only be profitable if it runs like an assembly line," makes note to the fact new shale gas wells must be drilled constantly, since while their production is prolific at first, it is brief (80% declines in the first year are common, with 30% declines in the second year from that lower level). Gushing industry statements about "100 to 300 year supplies" are not based on these observed declines, since the technology of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing is simply too new to provide actual knowledge of actual long term average "frac" well production capability. There are also potentially serious issues with groundwater pollution that may be caused by these new hydraulic shale fracturing processes which have yet to be investigated due to rules passed during the Bush administration which basically exempted shale gas drilling from EPA regulation. No matter - given declining supplies of oil and geographically-limited coal reserves, it appears the decision has been made to make natural gas into the replacement for oil and coal in ground transportation and baseload electric generating plant energy.

Due to the cost of new gas well drilling and the fracturing processes involved and the fact that this process must remain ongoing (the "assembly line" technique), to continue to free trapped shale gas deposits, the wholesale cost of natural gas must be above $6 per million BTU for any profits to permit further exploitation. Presently, the perceived abundance of shale gas and the recession have lowered prices to under $4 MMBTU and drilling has declined dramatically over the past year. Since the IEA announcement doubling its estimate of global gas reserves, gas price futures have continued to fall.

Natural gas profits are far lower than oil profits. The funds needed to cover the costs of converting the nation's automotive and trucking fleet and its national refueling infrastructure from a well-established, room-temperature, atmospheric-pressure-stable liquid fuel to LNG, liquefied natural gas, which requires high pressure (2400psi) transport and storage from source to end use in transportation, will have to be paid by someone. These multi-billion dollar new infrastructure requirements will increase the cost everything, from vehicles themselves to their fuel. Transportation costs will increase significantly over the coming years regardless of the oil or LNG mix. Until a large demand for liquefied natural gas is established, the low wholesale cost for gas will make tapping these estimated reserves possible only with large subsidies. Since the price for the world's remaining oil will climb ever higher as its production declines, the transnational oil firms now becoming heavily involved with gas development should be able to afford this re-investment, though you can expect them to be asking for and receiving ever more government handouts and tax breaks to offset their costs of production.

Due to it's lower energy density, natural gas has little present application in powering global ship transport, nor can it be used in the aviation industry. LNG, burned optimally at sea level, delivers 75,000 BTU/gallon, while jet fuel and bunker oil offer 128,000 -140,000 BTU/gallon . LNG delivers a bit more than half of the energy per gallon of conventional fuel. On top of this, oil products are transported and stored without special processing; they're liquid and stable at room temperature and pressure. Each gallon of LNG must be compressed to and maintained at 2400 psi. The amount of embedded energy required to simply compress natural gas at the scales required to replace oil is not insignificant.

Here's the deal: If natural gas is burned to make electricity at a baseload utility generation plant, electricity which is used to compress natural gas into LNG, only about 30% of the energy of the natural gas burned at the utility electric power plant will be converted into electricity (it's that damned 2nd Law of Thermodynamics again). The rest of the energy is lost as waste heat, little of which is used in modern utility plants, since they're located far from central cities which could use the heat in a "steam district." Of the electricity actually generated, about 18% is lost in transmission lines and transformers, again as heat, before it gets to the LNG compressor. The compressor motor loses another 20% of the energy it consumes since electric motors are only about 80% efficient. The final LNG product, while delivering 75,000 BTU/gallon, is in reality a much less efficient actual energy delivery system than the oil-based system it has been deemed to replace, since the embedded energy losses involved in making it are huge, and we've not included the further losses in transportation and delivery of LNG, nor the energy required to convert the world's transportation system from oil to the high-pressure reality LNG requires.

Globally, the world's largest reserves of natural gas are in ... wait for it ... Iran. According to Canada's Global Research, "Within the Middle East, Iran is the undisputed top holder of gas reserves. Its South Pars gas field is the world’s largest. If converted to barrel-of-oil equivalents, Iran’s South Pars would dwarf the reserves of Saudi Arabia’s giant Ghawar oilfield. The latter is the world’s largest oilfield and since it came into operation in 1948, Ghawar has effectively been the world’s beating heart for raw energy supply. In the soon-to-come era of natural gas dominance over oil, Iran will oust Saudi Arabia as the world’s beating heart for energy. The scheduled start of drilling this month by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in Iran’s South Pars gas field could be both a harbinger and explanation of much wider geopolitical developments. The $5 billion project – signed last year after years of foot dragging by western energy giants Total and Shell under the shadow of US-led sanctions – reveals the main arterial system for future world energy supply and demand."

"Critics have long suspected that the real reason for US and other western military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is to control the Central Asian energy corridor. So far, the focus seems to be mainly on oil. But the CNPC-Iranian partnership shows is that natural gas is the bigger prize that will be pivotal to the world economy, and specifically the dual flow of this fuel westwards and eastwards from Central Asia to Europe and China."

The only things really known for certain are: Gas, while "cleaner-burning" than oil (and coal) due to its lower number of hydrogen-carbon bonds, which serve up not only less energy but less carbon dioxide, still increases carbon levels in the atmosphere. To obtain the same amount of transportation energy, more gas or LNG must be burned by volume than oil (~58% more, to equal a gallon of gasoline's energy) and a lot of energy will be required to compress and process the gas into LNG, further lowering the overall efficiency of gas as an oil replacement. "Clean burning gas" offers some advantage to oil environmentally, but on a mass scale, atmospheric carbon levels will continue to rise, since the world's transportation system will continue mining and burning stuff that has been sequestered in the earth for a hundred million years, releasing its carbon content into the air.

Sadly, the massive push behind natural gas development worldwide will likely again slow down the further development and mass deployment of carbon-free renewable energy technology. Every delay in the deployment of real renewable energy technology pushes this deployment further into a more energy starved future, lowering the probability that enough renewable energy technology can and will be deployed to provide continuation of modern civilization on a mass scale. Renewable energy sources in the modern sense all require a lot of embedded fossil energy in their own development, manufacture, transport to market and deployment - as these fossil sources grow more expensive and unreliable in availability, the window to deploy them in renewable energy manufacturing grows smaller, since competition for these ancient BTU will only increase.

All things considered, the accepted paradigm of easy, fossil energy powered exponential economic growth, and the corresponding exponential population growth this energy made possible, still appears to be ending rapidly since, on the scale needed to replace oil, natural gas and its processing and infrastructure requirements as a transport fuel won't come cheap enough, nor be widespread enough, to offset the collapse in both cheap, reliable oil production and the mass civilization that has grown up around cheap, reliably-available oil.

* On Buying the Right Boiler ... technical stuff but, if you heat your home, maybe worth a look...

This article was written for our local newspaper, after I was called in to evaluate problems several local people were having in their new heating systems recently.

Over the past few years there have been remarkable developments in gas fired hydronic heating system boiler technology. These new condensing boilers cost about twice as much as an old-style cast iron boiler but, when installed in the proper type of heating system, can reclaim the most of the heat energy formerly lost in the water vapor component of boiler exhaust gasses. This capability, coupled with computerized burner microcontrollers that modulate or adjust the burner to the level needed to suit inside and outside temperatures, can achieve remarkable efficiencies and energy cost savings over time, savings which can quickly cover the higher cost of this new type boiler. As always, there are laws of physics which must be obeyed in order so that these boilers to "work their magic" and achieve these savings, and not all hydronic or water-based heating systems will allow these new boilers to save you a dime.

There are several types of hydronic heating designs but they all fall into one of two groups; low temperature or high temperature water systems.

In-floor radiant heating sometimes employs a “high mass radiator,” a concrete subfloor slab that is insulated from the Earth below, within which hydronic heat pipes are placed in order to heat the floor and therefore the room above, and these slabs are perfect for use with new condensing boilers, since they require very low temperature heating water. Today there are also newer, manufactured low-mass sub-floor hydronic heat radiator systems which use grooved, metallic-coated subflooring products to conduct heat from the pipes into the rooms above rapidly. These "warm board" systems work well in multi-level homes where heavy slabs might be difficult to install on upper floors.

While not as efficient in heat delivery as the above in-floor systems, contractors still often use staple-up under-floor hydronic heat systems, in which the hydronic pipes are literally stapled up on the underside of a standard wooden sub floor, since these systems are inexpensive to install in new homes. Personally, I don't like staple-up designs, for a couple of reasons.  They require the hottest of low-temperature range water, since the radiator pipe is insulated from the heated space by the sub-floor as well as the floor covering(s) and because of this, don't deliver the efficiency of other radiant heating systems.  What's saved up front, as always, is paid for over time, with interest.

Even newer to the US, but used for years in Europe, are several lines of efficient low temperature hydronic wall-mounted convector-radiators, all which use low temperature hydronic water.

All of these heating delivery systems fall into the low temperature group, and can use new condensing boilers at maximum efficiency, since all function well when the boiler temperature is set between 120 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit. After the boiler water transfers some of its heat into the living space by circulating through the hydronic under-floor or other low temperature radiators, the water returns to the boiler 10 to 20 degrees cooler than it was when it left the boiler. This relatively cool boiler environment allows a modern condensing boiler to deliver its rated 95%+ efficiency in combustion and operation.

Anyone who wears glasses or ski goggles is familiar with condensation and knows you cant easily fog up your lenses on a hot summer day since it requires colder temperatures for condensation to take place. Since there is significant heat contained in a boilers exhaust gas water vapor, today’s highly efficient boilers reclaim most of that heat by passing the exhaust gas through a special heat exchanger inside the boiler water jacket, where the vapor condenses back into a liquid, losing its heat in what is called a phase change. Here’s the critical design factor: If the hydronic water surrounding the heat exchanger is warmer than 130 degrees, the dew-point of the exhaust gas water vapor, the vapor will not condense and release its latent heat into the hydronic water. Instead, the water vapor and heat will just go up the chimney and the expensive new boiler will perform no better than a cheap, conventional iron boiler.

Since at our altitude, the overall efficiency of energy transfer from burning gas into a cast iron boiler’s hydronic water jacket is about 65% and a well designed condensing boiler system will operate at 93% to 95%, the monthly energy cost savings or loss of them with an improper design and improper matching of the boiler to the heating system - are significant.

High temperature hydronic systems, typically zero-mass finned-tube baseboard radiator-convectors and forced hot air fan coil systems, require much hotter hydronic water than in-floor and other low temperature radiators, by design. Developed before boilers could safely condense and high temperature water was mandatory, baseboard fin-tubes and forced air systems require 180 degree water to operate at their designed heat transfer rates. After some of the heat energy is transferred to the living space, the water returns to the boiler, but this return water is still quite hot, generally no lower than 160 degrees Fahrenheit. This is far too hot to allow a condensing boiler to do its job.

The difference in the water temperatures required by the two types of heating systems is vital to note when the buying and matching a boiler and the radiating portion of the homes heating system. Since a modern condensing boiler will cost twice as much as an old fashioned cast iron boiler, using one in the wrong heating application, where its performance is no better than the old fashioned boiler, is a huge waste of money.

Can a regular iron boiler be operated at lower temperatures with low temperature radiators? Yes, but when exhaust gas condenses inside an iron boiler and metal chimney flue, the resulting liquid will quickly dissolve and ruin the boiler, since the exhaust condensate water is highly acidic. Condensing boilers have been designed using corrosive-resistant stainless steel heat exchangers and they drain the condensate water away through a lime or other alkaline neutralizer before the acid-neutralized condensation water is placed into the home’s sewer system. Conventional cast iron gas boilers must be operated at temperatures considerably above the exhaust gas dew point of 130 degrees, to expressly prevent condensation within the boiler and the chimney flue.

I have been recently asked to look at several heating systems recently that had been upgraded with new, expensive condensing boilers but were delivering no energy cost savings.

In one case, an old iron boiler had been replaced with an expensive new condensing boiler feeding a typical high temperature baseboard / forced air heating system which, since it required 180 degree water, could not take advantage of the boilers efficient capabilities. At another home, an expensive, new condensing boiler had been installed with a new hot water baseboard heating system; resulting in a low temperature condensing boiler trying to work in a high temperature heating application. Each system would have been better served with a conventional, cheap, iron boiler since the expensive boiler was delivering the same low heat transfer efficiency as an iron boiler, which would have cost less than half as much to purchase, for the same monthly utility bills.

If you’re building or need to replace your homes heating system, look into low temperature hydronic radiator designs; in the floors or integrated into or even mounted on the walls, since these types of heating systems will allow that new 95% efficient boiler to actually deliver its rated savings. Another huge plus of low temperature radiant heat systems is the ease with which their heat supply can be augmented using simple solar hot water collectors, which operate optimally in the low temperature 120 -130 degree hydronic heat temperature range and, properly incorporated into a low temperature radiant system, can easily cut monthly heat bills in this climate by another 50%.

If you’re installing hydronic baseboard fin-tube radiator or hydronic fan coil / forced air heat, skip the condensing boiler entirely, since it will never perform better than a conventional cast iron boiler and, when your monthly heat costs are 25%-35%  higher than your neighbor who uses a low temperature system, the $2500 or so savings on the iron boiler will pay for a few of those higher monthly bills.