Steam from exhaust during cold startup

[Maxodus]

Hi guys

I've done some research on this but want to check with everyone here to see if i've missed anything. Basically my coolant level has went down steadily during the last couple of months and i notice during a cold startup in the morning, a lot of steam would come out and it takes over 10 minutes for the car to warm up to near 180. Once it's warmed out, i don't see the steam and the temp is fine (stays near 180) even after driving around local streets and freeway for hours. It's a 2003 base manual with 60k+ miles and i checked the overflow plastic tank and it is not leaking there...

After researching this for the past week on this forum (great stuffz here guys!) a couple of possible scenarios came up:

1. Heat exchanger failure: a rare but known problem that can lead to the burning of coolant. Although when i check the dipstick, the texture of the oil does not seem "chocolate" like, and I don't know how to tell inspect the exchanger to see if it's failed or not.

2. Heat gasket failure: need to run a pressure test to gather more data. Btw how often should this be replaced?

3. Cracked head: a more extensive cylinder compression test would be needed. Not sure i'm ready to tackle this yet...

I'm having a strong gut feeling towards [1] - or at least it's something I can tackle myself first and rule out the other two (expensive jobs).

Any takers?

happy holidays

Max