Hot Water Options

[Dave C]

My son/ wife live in Connecticuut, in an area where natural gas is not available. He has (had) a oil fired boiler, that provided both heat AND hot water.

Most recently he has added a pellet stove insert, that WILL provide (most of) their home heat. He is now considering a tankless water heater, thus stop using that boiler for (only) their hot water.

Would an electric, tankless Water heater be a viable option ?? (The oil boiler would then be a Back Up home heating option, but not used daily/ year round).

He has spoken with a contractor. The contractor recommended a new, "Expensive Propane Hot water install. That does not seem viable to me, given that they use a limited amount of hot water daily.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Considering our electric rates in CT, I'd never consider electric for anything. I'd look at propane, but I'd look t other options using the existing or a new oil burner

A few years ago, I had a System 2000k boiler and hot water tank installed and my oil bill decreased by 39.7% the first year. There is a heat exchanger that uses the oil fired boiler with a separate zone. The tank is well insulated and the boiler will not go on unless you run the dishwasher or take a shower.

If he has a single unit like I had, it is very inefficient. Used to bug me to lay in bed on a hot August nigh and hear the boiler kick on to heat the water that would not be used for hours. No more.

I have a spreadsheet and using degree days I've tracked my oil use for a few years Much more economical than the old systems. My house was built in 1978 so it was ready for an upgrade.

[gfretwell]

Why not just buy a regular electric water heater? You need a pretty big service to handle any meaningful amount of instant hot water.

[Stormin Mormon]

Since your son's got oil already, that's should be less expensive than electric. I'd leave the indirect heater going, with the boiler. Never mind the tankless.

Tankless tend to be expensive, and would cost to install.

[CRNG]

On Sun, 02 Nov 2014 12:30:37 -0500, [e-mail] wrote in

+1

[Ed Pawlowski]

.19 per kw hr is a good reason

[bubba]

That's a good point. Dave should consider a coal-fired tankless water heater. The electronic ones don't have the problems the old ones did.

[Stormin Mormon]

The coal fired ones, often have a large mass capacity. I like the high mass ones, you only have to shovel coal once a day, not four times a day like the low mass tankless ones.

Maybe if more people put in coal fired, the coal mines would come back to activity?

[trader_4]

Don't they have any off-peak arrangements at lower rates for WH's? Here in NJ, even back in the 60's, we had a WH on a separate meter on a timer, so that it only ran off-peak and at a lower rate.

Aside from the cost of electricity, a tankless capable of supplying a whole house is going to require one hell of an electric service. Most likely requiring the line to the house, panel, etc to be upgraded. If I were to go with electric, it would be a tank type. The only difference is that with tankless you save the amount of energy that the tank loses just sitting there. He can do the math, but I bet it will be a very long time before he recovers all the additional costs of a tankless and just breaks even.

Since he has oil already, an oil fired hot water heater might be an option. Not sure how much more efficient they are versus continuing to use the existing boiler for just hot water.

Also there are heat pump based tank WH's that use electricity to run a heat pump, greatly reducing the electricity required. I'd look into that, but I suspect the high upfront cost would run into the same recovery period problem as tankless.

[Dave C]

Thanks for the advise

[Ed Pawlowski]

Ther is Variable Peak Pricing, but from what I see, it is no bargain. Don't know if there are other options.

Agree that tankless is not the way to go.

Oil fired water heaters are on the expensive side compared to gas or electric. Then you have that flue thing to deal with.

A tankless conversion to the existing boiler is probably one of the best methods. It is set up as a separate zone and yhou have an insulated water tank. It only fires the burner on temperature drop. With fast recovery times, you don't need a huge tank for lots of hot water.