Water Heater Opinions

Hi All,

I'll try to keep this short: I recently purchased a house and it has some hot water issues. Basically, water starts out hot but goes to luke warm pretty quickly. In the shower, this happens within a couple minutes. Sinks take a little longer.

Water Source: Shallow well, I'd guess ~30-40 ft deep. Water definitely has some iron and sediment in it. There are two filters that I changed after I bought the house--didn't look like they had been in a very long time.

Current Heat Source: Ford Aqua Bank off a Pensotti 151 mbh oil boiler. I think it's 40 gal.

Oil guy told me he thinks he knows what is going on with the hot water and said the current system was installed in an overly complicated way and he can simplify it and hopefully solve the problem. I don't remember exactly what he said he thought the problem was, because it was coupled with his explanation of how the system worked.

He also said he'd come up with pricing for a heat pump based water heater, but he had concerns about using one depending on how bad my water really is.

What would you do in this situation? Natural gas is not available, so I'm stuck with oil or electric. Electric rates are high (~.23/kwh), so that's a concern. Oil boiler is relatively healthy, he says it is just very dirty. He also called it a three pass low mass unit and said even accounting for its age it is still a very good unit.

Also, I'm a single guy who isn't home too much so I don't use an awful lot of hot water.

Thanks!

I would like to see a picture of your set up and see what the complication is.

I also live in a place with high power rates. I installed a 50 gallon Rheem Marathon electric hot water heater in my place, as well as many customers. Lifetime warranty, and probably the cheapest electric tank to operate. Since putting it in, the jump on my power bill is only a couple of peanuts compared to the old oil fired heater, and my wife fills the bath tub every night and I usually shower twice a day.