I guess I'm fortunate in that my hot water heater is also my heating system. I have what is known as a summer/winter hookup, which means my oil-fired boiler for my hot-water baseboard heating system is the same boiler that provides domestic hot water. Essentially, there are two boiler units housed within the furnace, one for heating the house, and the other for domestic hot water. The system is very effecient, heats water in less than 3 minutes, and we never run out of hot water. Our first boiler lasted 35 years and never leaked until last fall, when it developed a minor drip. At this point I decided to have the system replaced, which cost about $3,500 including installation labor costs.

Some folks may be thinking "What about the high cost of heating oil? Wouldn't that make it more expensive to heat hot water?" In reality, NO! Oil heats hot water 13 times faster than electric, and 7 times faster than natural gas. Think of it this way. If you were to turn off your electric hot-water heater and allow the water temperature to reach room temperature, how long do you think it would take to reheat the water to 180 degrees? With most electric hot water heaters it would take hours. In my case, it's less than 3 minutes. During that three minute period I burn approximately 1/2-pint of oil. The difference in energy consumption between electric and oil-fired hot water heaters is enormous.

Because of the oil-fired hot water heaters ability to rapidly heat water, we leave the boiler turned off most of the time. When we need hot water for showers, washing dishes, etc.., it's a flick of a switch and in 3 minutes you have all the hot water you need.

Cheers,

Gary