The refurbishment of a building with better insulation particularly in the walls and in the roof with the windows replacement gives rise to a relevant reduction of the heating load. Then the existing boiler is surely oversized and it must be replaced. The selection of the model is connected to the new design load, but it is also bound to the nominal capacity of the equipment on sale, that is never below about 10 kW. Then it is of paramount importance the modulating ratio that is till which capacity the boiler can operate continuously without working in the inefficient ON-OFF control. For a typical detached building, first of all the load reductions with common refurbishment is considered for three climates: cold, temperate and mild in Italy. Condensing boiler seasonal performances are then compared with modulating ratio that from the simple ON-OFF arrives till 1:10 for two different nominal capacity. Finally a further performance improvement can be obtained with variable flow rate pumps, operating with a temperature drop relatively constant between supply and return. Whereas the already high boiler efficiency is not appreciably increased, the electricity saving to drive the pumps can be really outstanding. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.