Question:
Hank, I'm running into a situation where the oil fired tankless coil heating system in my house does not supply enough hot water for showers. The hot water will go cold in a few minutes. What are my options to improve the hot water?

Answer:
Surprisingly, this question comes up very frequently as many people find themselves not only running out of hot water but also paying too much to make the hot water that they use. The solution in most cases is upgrading to an indirect-fired hot water maker. Homes that use internal boiler coils, electric or gas fired hot water heaters have a much smaller capacity to produce hot water at levels that most families demand. With an indirect fired hot water maker, hot water is piped out of the boiler directly into a coil or heat exchanger in a highly insulated storage vessel. The heat from the water flowing through the coil is transferred to the domestic water inside the unit. Because of the high insulation value of the storage tank, there is very little standby heat loss and recover rates are super fast. This process of creating domestic hot water has two or more times the recovery rate of a tankless coil or a stand alone gas-fired water heater and supplies as much as five times the amount of hot water as a comparable-sized electric water heater. An indirect fired hot water maker should keep you and your family in plenty of hot water at an affordable cost. In many cases a homeowner can save up to 300 gallons when upgrading from a tankless coil system to an indirect fired hot watermaker-that can be a savings in excess of $1,000!

We're experts in providing energy and hot water solutions and we would be happy to provide you with a free system evaluation and a recommendation on how to increase your hot water capability while reducing your energy costs-give us a call, you'll be happy you did.

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