Home Improvement

BrutulTM said:

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see how the size of the tank has anything to do with how long it takes the hot water to get to the shower.

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It takes the same amount of travel time. That's likely not the problem though. It's just that the boiler has to heat the water on demand and it's not keeping up. If you have a tank, it has 40-50 gallons that is pre heated, so it can send that right away.

Just get a flamethrower and boil the water in the tub on demand.

I think ours is relatively small for our house if I had to guess. Also it's single digits outside

I think the water heater is our best bet.

I think the new on demand heaters are much more efficient

BrutulTM said:

I guess that makes sense. If those boilers are that weak then that's a shitty way to heat water for your faucets but is probably fine for heating the house.

I like the idea of on demand water heaters because it seems ludicrous to me that I pay to keep 50 gallons of water hot 24/7 just so I can have it during the 10 minutes a day that hot water is actually running but I've never had one. I assume that the new on demand heaters get going a lot faster than that?

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Well you're not really paying to keep it hot. At least that much. It's like filling up a thermos. You do want to try and right size it though so you are at least using what you heat for the most part.

Boiler is like4 years old

No we don't have a monopipe

Noodleface said:

I think that's why he's proposing it. We're sitting around waiting for cold water/pipes to dissipate. With a large tank we might eliminate that a bit.

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AS Brutal said earlier you need a water re-circulation pump. The only reason you would need to upgrade your water heater is if you run out of hot water during showers.

What's a water recirculation pump going to do if we're on demand heating g water?

Also prefaced it saying I had no idea what any of the parts are

Had a 'fun' time last week as I suddenly heard lots of dripping on the ceiling as if it was raining... opened up the attic and sure enough there was water dripping from everywhere.

The sustained lengthy period of below-freezing temperature in New England coupled with improper moisture venting in the main part of my house had resulted in tons of frost building up on the north side of the attic which was then melting on the sunny day right before the blizzard hit.

I've suspected the bathroom vent in the master bath as being crap for awhile now so I think that is a likely culprit for most of the problem, but I can't discount the high humidity in the house over the holidays as we were constantly cooking / entertaining over that period. Some have said that its a sort of 'fluke' that will likely not happen again unless there's a lengthy period of freezing temps but I have a horrific history with water intrusions of all kinds and will not abide the risk posed by this situation.

You live in MA. You know there are at least a few times in the winter where it hits below single digits

Noodleface said:

You live in MA. You know there are at least a few times in the winter where it hits below single digits

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Not for the extended period like we had. This last 2 weeks was a rather historic event.