Shutting down oil

[Chevalrose]

We recently purchased a pellet insert for our living room and it's heating our house well enough this winter. We're currently looking to get our tankless coil replaced with an electric hot water heater because currently it's using oil to run and it's super inefficient. The oil heat so far hasn't kicked in all that much (only if the upstairs gets cold...we're in NH).

My question is...how do I protect the oil/boiler/baseboard water pipes if we aren't using them very often. I'm wondering if perhaps it might be better for them to be "shut down" (drained, and protected perhaps?). My only issue with that is if we need the oil to supplement the pellets on a very cold night/day (although we do have a coal/wood stove on the other side of the house as well). Ideally we don't want to use the oil at all, but we don't want to remove the entire system.

Suggestions?

 

[ewdudley]

This may be relevant:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/gettin-cold-watch-for-frozen-pipes.119072/

Except the above thread is about ways to activate zones periodically when the main fossil boiler is online.

It sounds like you would prefer to shut the boiler off completely except when needed to heat up unused rooms. In that case you'd probably need to bypass the normal controls and figure out a way to circulate room temperature water through the zones while the boiler is shut off.

You could hook up a double throw switch that would connect the circulators to the normal control system on one throw and then to a cycle timer on the other throw. The cycle timer would run water through the whole system a few minutes each hour, stealing a little heat from the warm parts of the house and transferring it into the pipes in the colder parts of the house.

 

[STIHLY DAN]

Put glycol in the system. Change it out every 5 yrs.

 

[iceguy4]

an electric hot water heater

Heat pump HW heater...worth the extra$$$ sorry bout the hijack..