Not enough hot water

Will_D

I have a modest two story 100 year old house in Vermont with a 30-40 year old oil fired boiler.  The heating is fine or even a bit over sized, but hot water is a problem.  It's true that if the flow demand is kept low enough the water comes out hot forever, but we get lots of guests who don't understand any of that, and we like our guests.  We'd also just like better flow.  We only use the house on weekends and vacations and we lower the heat to 50 degrees when we're not there.

I'm thinking I could add a supplemental electric hot water heater that I could use when I need it.  I assume I would have to put the heater before the boiler in the flow path, because otherwise if I'm not using the heater I'd never get any hot water until the cold water was displaced from the water heater.  But this would mean that virtually all of the heating load would be carried by the electric water heater.  So I might as well shut the boiler down for the summer completely, and I'd be paying more for the hot water.

Is any of this even a good idea?  Am I missing anything important?  Is there a better approach to getting more flow out of my boiler?

Charlie from wmass

Yes there is a better way!

A properly installed indirect water heater would give you a much better flow and recovery rate. The tankless could also be repiped and mixing valves added along with a storage tank. I have a customer with a tankless heater in their hot water boiler and a storage tank and they have a 16 room B&B and they never run out of hot water. The same can be done for a steam boiler, taking into regards the condition and size of the boiler of course. Try the find a Professionel section and remeber some of us do travel a fairly wide radius.