Thermostat/boiler compatibility

[amphibo]

Have a 29 year old natural gas Burnham boiler for radiator steam heat. Recently renovated our 1200 sq ft house and updated the thermostat from an American Standard to a Honeywell thermostat.

Problems with getting the furnace to fire up. Usually have to manually make the damper motor connection to fire up but other times it turns on by itself.

Unfortuantly, old thermostat trashed during house renovation.

Am having the damper motor replaced but have heard from our plumber that there might be a compatibility issue between old furnance components and new thermostat.

Any brand recommendations?

Also looking at replacing furnance but suffered sticker shock after all the other work we've done and will have to wait until next year for replacing it.

Contrator recommended replacing existing Burnham with the Burnham Independence IN6 which appears to be a midsized model.

Again, it's a small house, 1200 sq ft with 9 radiators.

[glenn stanton]

One concern I have regarding this question is the age of the boiler. You have stated that the boiler is 29 years old but Burnham has only been configuring its gas boilers with vent dampers since around 1982. In order to properly answer your question I would need the full model number of this boiler as well as the Serial Number. This way I will be able to tell what you actually have there and make some sort of judgement. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton
Manager of Training
Burnham Hydronics