On Jan 23, 9:52 pm, krw wrote:
In article om,
says...

PLEASE HELP!!

Background ... Just bought a house, so I do not know the history. What
I do know is I have a Freddy Krueger oil furnace in the basement
handling the hot water and heating duties (Huge ... 54"w x 30"d x 54"h)
Found documents from furnace .. 1952 original with house!! The heat
works great, not to mention heating the basement nice and toasty.
Problem is with the hot water. No hot water heater, so it is coming
from the furnace, as i mentioned.This isn't unusual even for newer construction. My house, built in
'86, also has a domestic hot water coil for hot water. It works
well enough, though the boiler has to run all year (not necessarily
a bad thing).

The cold water pressure is great,
which is the driving force of our faucet water pressure. When hot
water only is on ... it takes 3 minutes to fill up a gallon jug (no
joke) and about 40 seconds of that water to start getting hot. Typical
is running the shower for 3-5 minutes before being able to jump in.Sounds like the boiler is a ways form the shower (we also have this
problem).

Money down the drain, literally. (one thing that works is turning up
the hot water temp so the little water that comes out warms the strong
cold water pressure to where it is usable ... just FYI for people with
similar problem)

What to do?? Now I checked this when the furnace is not actually on,
so the water flow should be dedicated to normal hot water use. Also,
there is a faucet just as the pipes come out of the furnace. Figured
if the flow was strong, the pipes would be full of mineral deposits.
BUT, the flow is the same (not to mention the faucet is leaking because
I disturbed it). So it must be the furnace hot water output, no?? Or
how / is it possible to get more hot water pressure? Would love to
change to a smaller furnace and reclaim my basement, but I heard these
old ones are work horses that I should run until it dies. And the bank
account likes to hear that, so ...The domestic coil may be plugged with calcium (and other slime).
You can have it "boiled out" by your boiler service tech. They use
an acid to dissolve the built-up sluge. Another alternative is to
add a hot water tank and put it on a separate heat zone, bypassing
the domestic hot water coil.

Is there anything I can do to increase my hot water pressure???

Thank you very much in advance ... and my water bill can use a break
)--
Keith

Thank you so much for your input. Sounds like first step is getting
the coil cleaned, and a trust worthy guy will tell me if it needs
replaced. Good idea on a separate heater, seeing when this boiler
finally goes, I would do the two separate units anyway. Would spread
out the cost anyway over two installs.

Thanks again.