- OT -- Tankless water heaters - 5 Updates
- Activate PIR xmtr - 2 Updates
| The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com>: Sep 28 12:15PM -0700 I ask here because the home repair group is worthless and you guys are smart. Anybody see a downside to a natural-gas tankless water heater? We don't need a huge quantity of hot water at any one time and the tankless ones seem cheaper than the normal ones which eventually solidify with SoCal hard-water crap. -- Cheers, Bev "Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But scream it at them in Klingon, because life is also terrifying and confusing." -- D. Moore |
| dansabrservices@yahoo.com: Sep 28 12:38PM -0700 While I don't have gas, I can relate my own experience with tankless systems (oil in this case). I recently (3 years ago) replaced an old (26 year) furnace that was tankless for hot water. I now have a more efficient system with a separate hot water tank. The tank looks like a heating zone to the furnace. The difference here is that the furnace now holds about 1 gallon of water in it. The old one had 2.5 or more. Since the heat exchanger resides on the top of the furnace, the exhaust passes it as well. This means that when not running, the heat continues to go up the chimney. This in turn makes each call for water to require to heat up the internal water as well as what is used. Now, the hot water is in a large tank (like a thermos bottle) that doesnot lose heat (at least not much). With no change in use (I heat with wood so this is only used for hot water), I have reduced my oil consumption by 80%. The furnace may run periodically to keep the water hot, but only when it is called for. The oil company hates me now. Even with heating with wood, I would fill the tank multiple times per year. In the last 3 years, I have used less than 300 gal of oil per year down from over 1200-1600. At this rate, the new furnace will be paid from savings by the end of next year, a 4.5 year payback. I would recommend using a separate hot water tank for the most savings. Dan |
| "pfjw@aol.com" <peterwieck33@gmail.com>: Sep 28 01:11PM -0700 On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 3:15:41 PM UTC-4, The Real Bev wrote: > need a huge quantity of hot water at any one time and the tankless ones > seem cheaper than the normal ones which eventually solidify with SoCal > hard-water crap. I will give you two perspectives: a) At our summer house, we have a Bosch instant-hot LP-fired water heater. It has been in place now for over 10 years and is flawless. It makes infinite hot water for a small house - one full bath, kitchen and outside shower. It is fed from a shallow well, again with no issues at all. Upside: NO storage of hot water. 90%+ efficient. Downside: There is a definite threshold before the flame starts, so those who dribble-rinse their dishes will be unhappy. And turning the water on and off leaves a (small) gap of cold water with each flame-start. At the main house, we have a Weil-Mclain Ultra boiler with an indirect storage tank (40 gallons) that is super-insulated. As the boiler is 230,000 BTU, it can more than keep up with any demand, but the storage maintains a precisely even temperature irrespective of demand and incoming temperature. The boiler is 96% efficient, and we heat a 5,000 s.f. 1890-vintage center-hall colonial with no difficulty at all. I would never go back to a conventional storage water heater, again. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
| jurb6006@gmail.com: Sep 28 04:21PM -0700 I've only seen gas ones. Actually I saw one advertised for about $ 250 which I think is reasonable if it is reliable. From what I recollect you need a 1" gas line to it, and on top of flue (which is cool enough to use PVC I think)you need a fresh air intake otherwise whenever it runs it creates a sight vacuum pulling in air that is not heated nor cooled to your satisfaction. The next one here might be a tankless, we got a 1½" gas line right near the existing tank. I don't know about electric ones, but common sense tells that they pull alot of juice. You might actually need to upgrade your service unless it is already new enough. No flue or intake though, which you would need not just for gas, but for LP, propane, anything that burns. If you install it yourself, fuck all that noise about a pipe threader, get the precut, threaded gas (sometimes called "black") pipe and then the unit goes where it goes and you adjust the water lines to accomodate. Almost anything is easier to deal with than thickwall 1" steel pipe. If the existing tank here goes I will know alot more because we do not call contractors, well except for roofing and concrete and not all the time for that either. The houses of almost everyone we know are worked on by me, or Jack if he gets back into it. |
| The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com>: Sep 28 08:44PM -0700 > in air that is not heated nor cooled to your satisfaction. The next > one here might be a tankless, we got a 1½" gas line right near the > existing tank. OK, you guys have convinced me that they're OK. Our tank-heater refuses to light, and we've had it long enough that it's probably been reduced to half the original volume. Google has igniter-changing videos, but that looks painful for people who don't like kneeling/lying on the floor. The gas company guy is coming Monday to take a look, and I assume he can tell us what additional stuff we might need and maybe roughly how much it will cost to have one installed. I do dishes maybe once a week, and I'm pretty tolerant. I just looked at our gas bill. The gas costs $12/month (13 therms), there's a per-house charge of $5 and $3 in taxes. I don't think we'll break even with the savings in our lifetime, but it's worth something to not have to deal with the tanks ever again. -- Cheers, Bev "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea: massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." --Gene Spafford (1992) |
| "pfjw@aol.com" <peterwieck33@gmail.com>: Sep 28 10:06AM -0700 On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 12:25:37 PM UTC-4, Terry Schwartz wrote: > I think you will find that many of us are "only technicians"..... Some of us, not even that. Just hobbyists. Typically, well-grounded in the practical, however. And, I dunno, our neighbor has a garage door with a floor switch tied to his home-security system. It indicates on his keypad, and if he tries to arm with it open, it announces "Garage Door Open". I expect that two inches open = Open, but were I to bother with garage doors, I would want to know if it were open even a little bit. Point being that this is an off-the-shelf device https://www.amazon.com/Overhead-Garage-System-Contact-Mounted/dp/B01KY938HS Or, even one of those automated doorbells that rings several hundred feet away when a door opens. No muss, no fuss. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
| Terry Schwartz <tschw10117@aol.com>: Sep 28 10:44AM -0700 > No muss, no fuss. > Peter Wieck > Melrose Park, PA That's a very similar magnetic switch to the one I installed. Only I placed mine at the top of the door, on the header. Magnet is on the door itself. A lesson learned is do NOT buy the cheap 50 cent plastic bodied magnetic alarm switches, buy the good quality switches as shown. Save yourself a ton of aggravation. |
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