Ok.
I know enough to get myself in trouble and have the tools to be dangerous.
I have a city water, a Burnham oil furnace, baseboard heat and no water heater.

I've always replaced the filter and nozzle at the start of the season. My previous oil company was going, and then went, bankrupt so there was one year I had to change filters and nozzles 3 times. (I think they were using up the bottoms of their tankers. The sludge that settled over time.)

Last year I vacuumed out the burn chamber, wire brushed the electrodes, reset their height and the air slider. I threw in a new flame sensor just because it was on sale. This year there was no sediment to be vacuumed out.

Three or four years ago my shower would run cold quickly.
I replaced the mixing valve with a beefy Honeywell unit.

Last Fall I replaced my thermostat with a nice digital one.

This winter...
I heard a bang. Half an hour later I realized the furnace never shut off. I went downstairs to a small river.
Seems what had happened is the regulator from the city line failed. My system was shocked with a spike of pressure. Pressure gauge was red line and blow down was leaking everywhere.

I shut everything down. I replaced and reset the regulator to 17 psi. The gauge was shot so I replaced the gauge with a pressure and temperature type. The blow down was trickling enough to fill a bucket a day so I replaced the blow down valve. It still filled half a bucket a day so I brought the regulator down to 12psi and everything has been swell since then...

...except now my showers will run cold in less than 10 minutes. There are no more puddles so I don't suspect I ruptured the water jacket. The flame basket is still dry so I don't think anything internal by the flame tubes ruptured.

It is cold outside but I have foam condoms over all the pipes and sure the water eventually got cold but it was never this quick.

Now the furnace was installed in 1993. I've heard Burnhams are only good for ~20 years.

One side of me was thinking about installing a little electric hot water heater before the furnace just for hot water. A preheater, if you would. That should keep the furnace from turning on unless it needs to for the baseboard system and keep the water temp up.
The other side of me thinks that's a band aid and it wasn't necessary before - what changed?

Unrelated but I also have an "energy efficient" washing machine. It turns the water off and on and spurts and now I have water hammer. I put a Sioux Chief arrester on both the hot and cold and added a separate arrester on the hot water line but it's not enough. Should I get another regulator to kick the pressure down before the washing machine?


--Steve

what you have is a boiler
you must not have natural gas available cause your using oil
a small electric wh wont help,an on demand(tankless) electric if you can plum it only to feed you domestic hw needs and not the radiators..
from what i gather from your post its time to modernize
dont know what stae youre in but most have upgrade assistance and there are fed and some local tax breaks available..

btw  isnt paraquat the nixon era herbicide sprayed on mexican mj fields?

Natural gas is available but I have no appliances that use natural gas. The previous owner had a gas dryer but I bought an electric when I moved in.
They were charging me 5 dollars a month for the luxury of having natural gas even though I wasn't consuming any of it.

I was talking about using the water heater to supplement the feed to the shower and keeping the "boiler" for the baseboard set up.

Yes, it's a colorless, odorless, highly toxic herbicide.

Blow down valve. Pop off valve. The pressure relief valve in the back that opens if pressure gets too high to stop it from blowing up.


--Steve