Every old house tells a story or two.
Here’s a good one.
Took a little bit of explaining this to the first time buyer. Anyone care to comment on the components?
And this was an interesting combination, gas space heater and gas fire in the same room.
Hi Leni,
The first photo looks like an old boiler that someone sealed with tar.
G
The boiler looks to be an asbestos/mortar covered concrete type JMO
The clients, who were seasoned flippers, were concerned about an overhead “Oil Tank” and wondered what would happen if it leaked.
I had to explain that even though the front panel of the Boiler said Hi-T Oil Burning Steel Boiler, it had in fact been converted some time in the 1960’s to Gas (probably after the 6-Day war in Israel in 1967 when the Oil and Gasoline prices went through the roof)
The Tank was in fact on old gravity fed pressure tank on the Hydronic side and was not connected to the “oil” system at all, which was in fact completely removed as far as was visible.
This required a warning of the possibility of hidden oil tanks. The boiler had been clad in cementitious material post installation with the likelihood it has asbestos for fire/thermal protection.
The gas firebox was seriously deteriorated to the point it rad been red-tagged by a previous gas inspector. This led to an explanation that further inspection by a qualified HVAC contractor was required and while repair may be possible, the likelihood of finding parts was rare, and that a replacement should be budgeted for.
The reason I posted this was to help newer Inspectors, who may come across these older systems very infrequently that just because a system says something on it, doesn’t mean that what it really is, and just because you may have someone at the inspection who professes to “understand” what they are looking at, frequently, if you educate yourself properly you will find you should actually know more and can guide them correctly.
I was also hoping to trip someone up into declaring the expansion tank an oil tank too, but no-one bit. =D>