How much to replace a wall mounted gas fire boiler?

[Joe Xie]

I am about close escrow for a unit with wall mount gas fired boiler providing hot water and water radiator for heating. The seller disclosure that the tenant called the shower sometime do not have hot water but could recover itself later without doing anything. My question is how much it would be fix issue like that? How much it will be to replace it, the new boiler and how much to install? The property is located in Bay Area CA, the current boiler is Baxi's Luna 310fi. Thanks in advance for you inputs.

[Christopher Phillips]

@Joe Xie

Is the unit old? Or just not enough capacity for people taking long showers?

I'm starting to see more and more of the sleeker looking gas fired wall mount units, usually the Navien ones. In general, they have a good reputation, but you always have to be concerned about family size and hot water usage.

Levittown, NY near me is one of those early suburban development towns. To save space on the small homes they built, they installed oil fired boilers that provided heat with circulating baseboards and hot water with a coil insert. Oil boilers are a little messy, but with a cover and a little maintenance you'd never know it's in the kitchen on the wall. However, people have long complained about running out of hot water for the showers. What people normally do is eventually get a full sized boiler and a separate water heater and move everything to the back of the attached garage.

Newer, gas fired wall mounts units go for about $1,200 - $2,500 depending on the size and manufacturer and features... probably add another $1,000 to $1,500 for labor and supplies.

You always have to make sure you're getting the right capacity for the house. For a regular house, you should be able to run two regular showers at the same time with a wall mounted unit. However, if you have showers with large flow or tubs being filled it might be a problem. You can either get a larger unit, or get a separate water heater, which would actually be cheaper than replacing a wall mounted boiler. But it also might depend on how much space you have.