So, uh, I’ve got some good news, some incredibly startling news, and some bad news. Being a gentle sort, I’ll start with the good: Even though I’ve been rattling on about replacing the boiler for weeks now, we actually installed the new one months ago, back before the snow and the cold. It’s been up and running, with minor tweaks here and there, since mid-October. And we’re pretty psyched with it – it’s quiet, it’s compact, and it doesn’t offer the paranoia of death by carbon monoxide. And maybe it was only psychological, but we did feel warmer this winter.

In the end, though, the new boiler cost us quite a bit more than we had originally wanted to spend. Initial estimates ran from just under $6,000 to over $10,000, but the final bill was even more than that. But – lest ye judge – bear in mind the following: We had to replace the boiler and a broken water heater. We needed a boiler with enough juice for our house plus a one-bedroom apartment plus a studio apartment – since we were hacking up pipes anyway, we thought we might as well run everything through a hyperefficient new boiler rather than continuing to run off two not-so-efficient systems. And we ended up putting a new radiator in Hil’s office, since that room had zero heating, and we were jacking up the heat in the rest of the house to compensate. So there was a lot of adjustment – usually upward – of our initial estimates. With that in mind, dear readers, if you’ll take your seats, here is the final cost…

Yep: $12,381. Startling, I know. What is that, half a Prius? A down payment on a new house? In retrospect, I feel like we might as well have gone geothermal, or at least seriously solar. And here’s the bad news: We’ve been running this system for the entire 06–07 winter, and I’m not sure it’s saved us much. A few weeks back I was all high and mighty about gaining efficiency: I thought the new boiler was going to save us something like 30 percent on our home heating bills – or at least enough to pay for itself in a decade or two.

But that’s not happening. I’ve done the calculations – dispiriting columns of therms per heating degree day – and according to my slide rule, we’ve gained just under 7 percent in efficiency with the new, quote-unquote Benz of boilers. Meaning the simple payback for our new system – the time it takes to pay for itself in energy savings – is, oh, about 175 years.

Something must be wrong. Either our use is waaaaay up, or we’ve got yet another gas leak. Or gnomes are siphoning the stuff and huffing it in the crawlspace. Fear not: While I’ve had enough of talking boiler for a while, I will be untangling this cruel conundrum forthwith.

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Incidentally, I’m headed to this little greenbuilding convocation tomorrow; look for a full report next Tuesday, when I’ll also begin posting biweekly. Huzzah!