I have an oil-fired burner connected to a baseboard hot water heating system and the hot water heater. There are five zones for heating and one zone for the hot water heater. In the winter, having enough hot water is never a problem. However, when the weather gets warmer and the heating zone valves shut off, we usually run out of hot water by the end of the day. I turned the water heater zone valve to "manual" to keep it open all the time, but the oil burner doesn't kick on unless I turn a heating zone valve up all the way. Also, I notice that the housing on the zone valve seems very warm. It was replaced less than two years ago. Is this normal? Is there something else I should do to ensure the oil burner keeps heating water during warm weather? Thanks for any help!

Usually there is a thermostatic control attached in your system that acts as a over ride so the boiler will activate and hold temperature for domestic hot water heating service during nonheating times of the year. There are many ways to accomplish this task so there can be many different wiring and control setups.

Sometimes the main boiler control is designed for this task and other times a independent control system is used. If you can post pictures of the controls along with the brand and exact model numbers it is possible we can go further into the discovery process and find the defective component.