Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Boiler (Hot water Heat)

I live in the Midwest, the house I live in was built in 1960. For a heating system it has a boiler (Hot water heat).
How can I make it more energy efficent?

A COMPLETE and PROFESSIONAL tune up is the place to start.PDF

The unit is ran on natural gas.
Is this something I can help do? Can a regular H/AC dealer do it or do I need to contact a specialist?

natural gas hot water heat is one of the most efficient ways to heat. You could spend a few thousand bucks and upgrade the boiler to a 90%+ but that would likely only save you $50 a year. Is it worth it? The infiltration/exfiltration number is the largest factor when calculating a heat loss. I would attack this directly and inexpensively. Do your best to stop any drafts with weather stripping and caulking. Get the windows as tight as you can,and maybe build a vestibule in front of the door that is most often used.If you end up getting the house really tight you should spend the money on a heat recovery ventilator. These little things will make a big difference.

Get the unit checked over by a qualified service person. Any HVAC company can do this. Not only will this help in the efficiency, but you also want to make sure that there is not any carbon monoxide escaping into your house. Attic insulation will pay for itself in no time. In the midwest, I think you want 18-24" of blown insulation. You can do this yourself in some cases. Where I live, if you buy the insulation from a home inprovement store, they will sometimes let you use a blower a no cost or at a small fee. All you need to do if feed the bails into the unit and have somebody in the attic running the discharge tube. Make sure to use approved filtering masks so as not to breath the fiberglass insulation in.

I have never seen blown in fiberglass. Is this something new?

Rick

Fiberglass insulation has been around a long time. I should maybe have used the generic term as just insulation because the type is not all that important. What is important, is that the insulation is fluffy. In this form, there is a lot of trapped air which does not conduct heat very well and heat losses are low. Another benefit of blown insulation is that it is uniform and doesn't have gaps which you may have if you use bats and try to cover an attic with them.

My home is very well insulated, it has all new thermo-pane windows. I would like some information on getting my boiler updated to it would be more energy efficent. If there is something I can do to the boiler myself, to make it more efficent, please let me know? Other wise I will have to contact a professional to do the work. I would like to know what to mention to the person, before I accually have (him or her) do the job.

If you don't have these items already, install an exhust vent damper control, install spark or HSI ignition, clean burners. As has been said, you already have a very efficient system. Next would be to upgrade the boiler itself.