Manufactured date of Columbia furnace/boiler?

[blazenut]

Hello, Im new to this site, i have found some very helpful information regarding manufactured dates of heaters/hot water heaters... Im still trying to figure out Columbia heaters. Does anyone know how to date these? Is there a full list of cheats compiled yet? If not, once i put mine together i will post, thanks for the help.

[hausdok]

Hi,

The few Columbia boilers that I saw had the year of manufacture clearly displayed there on the serial number plate. Why don't you go downtown to the Columbia manufacturing plant right there in Pottstown or pick up the phone and call them and ask them if there is a particular way that they encode serial numbers and do they ever correspond to the date? If you get an answer, get back to us; we'd love to add that information to our boiler decoding information.

Are you just testing us and you work at the Columbia plant in Pottstown? Blazenut would be a good user name for a professional welder. Hmm?

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[blazenut]

When i find out the answer, ill post it... I had an inspection today that had a columbia heater, and plus i have one myself, im figuring its the first two numbers of the serial number are the year, but i want to make sure... i did call them, but with today being saturday, no answer... as far as my username... it was the name of my hockey team in college...

[Neal Lewis]

Date codes are printed on the gas valve, expansion tank, etc. Owner's manual will have some info, too. For me, I use a ballpark and not a born on date.

[Richard Moore]

Mike O,

Something you may want to add to the furnace decoder doc: I had a Magic Chef (yep, "Chef" not "Chief") oil fired furnace a couple of days ago. After much googling I was able to find the following...

Magic Chef serial numbers have one letter, five numbers, three letters. The last three letters are the date key: First is month, middle is year and last is place of manufacture. On the year letters, they start at 1980... A=1980, B=1981, C=1982 etc, etc.

Example: #A 12345ECB would be May, 1982 (made at factory "B").

[hausdok]

Kewl!

Thanks Rich,

I'll try and remember to add them this weekend.

OT - OF!!!

M.

[blazenut]

the serial number of the columbia furnace is

772597

i didnt think that it looked 32 years old though...

any thoughts...

[hausdok]

Hi,

It might be from the 25th week of 1977. I did a little googling for Columbia Boilers For Sale and then compared serial numbers shown to years that the furnace were supposed to have been purchased, when that was in the ads. All but a few seemed to ine up with year as first two and the next two numbers as the week. Some of those ads had photos; I didn't see a whole lot of difference in them from one year to the other, so it's possible that it could be 32 years old and look like one made more recently. They look like pretty solid units; I bet one that's 32 is just a spring chicken.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[blazenut]

thanks alot... ill verify it on monday and post what i find...

[blazenut]

for all who care... i called columbia, there is no dating information in the serial number of their products... the woman was very nice, she said to just call (610) 473 8457 when you run into one and she will dat it for you....

the unit in question was serial #772597 and it was manufactured in march of 95....

[hausdok]

Thermo-Pride does the same thing.

OT - OF!!!

M.