Oil-fired water heaters - why not very common? (how much, furnaces, tank)
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Is there any particular reason why oil-fired water heaters are not very common? Only one of the three major manufacturers (Bradford White) makes residential oil-fired water heaters. Most northern climate homes, even with oil furnaces, will typically have an electric or propane-fired water heater (assuming no natural gas service is available).
Considering that oil furnaces historically have lower operating costs than electric or propane furnaces, how come oil-fired water heaters have never been very common in residential applications?
Hm. I'll have to pay closer attention next time I'm up in Mass. I thought the water heater I saw at the one house I know has an oil furnace was oil-fired because of the way it was placed next to the furnace, etc. But it's possible that only one sometime in the past was oil-fired and this one is currently electric. The house is 40-odd years old. It's just old enough not to have had insulation in the walls because of how cheap oil still was then; can only imagine what happened to the folks up there in the 70s with houses like that! (Despite what must have happened, insulation was never added to this house, at least not until recently. I know at least some of it is now insulated.)
I've stayed over at this house a number of times in the past few years since they bought it, and there's not been a hot water problem at all even with repeated showers. So whatever is down there heats and recovers pretty well.
Hm. I'll have to pay closer attention next time I'm up in Mass. I thought the water heater I saw at the one house I know has an oil furnace was oil-fired because of the way it was placed next to the furnace, etc. But it's possible that only one sometime in the past was oil-fired and this one is currently electric. The house is 40-odd years old. It's just old enough not to have had insulation in the walls because of how cheap oil still was then; can only imagine what happened to the folks up there in the 70s with houses like that! (Despite what must have happened, insulation was never added to this house, at least not until recently. I know at least some of it is now insulated.)
I've stayed over at this house a number of times in the past few years since they bought it, and there's not been a hot water problem at all even with repeated showers. So whatever is down there heats and recovers pretty well.
This is what an oil water heater looks like, just in case you were wondering:
I grew up in a house with an oil furnace and electric water heater, and owned another one like it. Electric is stupid simple and was super-cheap to buy and install. Even though oil prices were relatively low, electric wasn't enough more to put up with the hassles of a more expensive oil burner. With the oil furnace, there was the need for the flue, dampers (which sucked warm air out of the garage/basement), regular inspections, and at least one expensive replacement over a ten year period. Houses with hot water or steam heat were rare but I imagine they may have had scavenger tanks. Starting in the 1970s, a lot of people actively avoided oil as much as possible due to the OPEC nonsense.
This is what an oil water heater looks like, just in case you were wondering:
Pretty sure I remember that extra contraption on the bottom, but then again it has been a while (at least a year or more) since I was in the basement of that house. Heh.
So I'm thinking maybe they are capable of decent recovery times after all. But there may be a limit to this. For example, the house I'm thinking of only has one shower. It may not be able to put out enough for simultaneous uses.
Couple other reasons that could come into play are inflexibility in locating them (has to be close to the oil) and perhaps cost (although I wouldn't think the differences are that great in cost).
Seems odd to me that you would find many propane water heaters with oil heat, but then perhaps these folks are also using propane for cooking. In the houses I've visited with oil everything else was electric. The other house I'm familiar with I'm not sure of the hot water at all, and then they just moved and I'm not sure about the new house. Then one more final house in Mass that I know well actually has natural gas because they even have a gas-powered generator.
But if you heat your house with an oil boiler (baseboard or slab heat), you can set an electric water heater so that the boiler heats the water in this heater during the winter months. Then during the summer you isolate the water heater from the boiler, and use electricity to heat the water.
In Alaska both electricity and heating oil are expensive, so I let the boiler heat the water year long. But where natural gas is available, natural gas water heaters and boilers (or furnaces) are more cost effective than oil. A gallon of heating oil costs around $4.00 up here, which translates to around $600.00 to $1,000 per month in the middle of the winter to keep the house at 67 degrees. Outside it could be anywhere from -20 degrees to -60.
I had mine replaced a few years ago. It's just a regular water heater, not connected to a boilers or anything. I was braced for a very expensive job but was shocked when a same day install of a 30 gallon unit was $1400 including a new burner. After it was in, I saw the temperature setting only went to 120 degrees and I told them I needed higher. No problem to change it out. As to the functionality - fantastic. I don't think think it's possible to run out of hot water, even with very long, very hot showers. The burner on the unit is 100,000 btu/hr. That's equivalent to 29,300 watts and most electric water heaters are only 4500 watts. No wonder it's bottomless. Throughout the summer, my oil gauge doesn't even move. Put me in the thumbs up column.
We had a fairly old-fashioned version of this in a rented house, equipment from 1980 (house itself from 1880!), and hated it.
Combined unit to provide both closed-loop hot-water for radiators and to heat domestic water. The system had a reservoir for the heating system. As typically used those sit at 185F all year long. After a year or two of realizing how much oil I was wasting, I opened up the controller unit and adjusted the standby temp manually to 140F each summer.
Then, there was a coil inside the hot water reservoir through which domestic water flowed to be heated by the surrounding heating-system water. No storage, totally on demand.
This had several drawbacks:
The basically uninsulated boiler had to keep a big tank of water at 185F year round; you couldn't limit it to domestic water only, and of course if you shut off the system you had no hot water at all. In the summer that consumed ~1.5 gal oil per day assuming no hot water use beyond two showers, plus made that half the basement sweltering.
The temperature of the domestic hot water varied *drastically*. There was a temp-limiting mix valve, but when we first moved in it wasn't functioning well. Before we finally pushed the the LL to replace, domestic hot water was sometimes 165F; once replaced we limited to 130F. On the other hand, right after the heating system kicked on and the cold water from the radiators had been drawn down into the boiler, the domestic water might come out at 70F or less for several minutes.
Really sucked on winter workdays, where the heating system needed to go through several full circulations before the water was hot all around. You'd be wanting to shower while that was happening, with drastic temp changes with little warning since you couldn't hear the pumps kick on up there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 399083453
Typically, most boilers in New england have a on demand hot water heater built in. So not only does it heat your home, it heats the hot water.
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(Despite what must have happened, insulation was never added to this house, at least not until recently. I know at least some of it is now insulated.)
Oil Fired Water Heaters are the Best
