I'm having a GE Geospring geothermal water heater installed right next to my Columbia EM-100 oil burner furnace that currently provides hot water and heat (thru baseboards) for my home. Installs pretty much the same as a standward water heater but one plumber said there's a way to permanently cut off the oil furnace from providing the hot water now that the new water heater is taking over that function.

Is that recommended or necessary? I could also simply flip the oil furnace off in the summer months. Would that be a bad thing to do?

Thank you.

Hi RG

It could go either way... really up to you here.

Most likely you will never need the boiler hot water so why not just cap all off and be done with it?

However, if you are interested, you could have the plumber install a series of ball valves such that you could simply flip the ball valves and use the boiler hot water if the hot water heater ever fails. Of course, you would shut the boiler off in the Summer if you weren't using it... ;) You would also need to lower the boiler hot water aquastat so the boiler doesn't call to make hot water for now, but if you ever used it again would need to reset the aquastat to 160F-180F (most of the time), right?

Let us know if you have more questions...

Mark