[strider3700]

Well I figured I drag this thread back up.

I'm going to be going with a tankless water heater.
costco now sells them
http://www.costco.ca/en-CA/Browse/Produ ... pnav=&cat=

This gets rid of lots of issues I had about space and constantly heating a tank of water that gets used for an hour a day.

I'll have to be sure that I have a 200 amp service to the house. They list the heater as taking a 30 amp breaker and my old tank is also a 30 amp breaker. so I figure it should work.

I need to check to see if this unit will heat enough water hot enough for whole house use. not that I have a house bigger then a bathroom and a kitchen though...

[backstop]

Strider -

Sorry, another option for you to consider, looking to

1/. Provide hot water from solar &/or electric demand quite soon after you decide its needed -

2/. Minimal Period of return on investment (including operation costs

3/. Minimal sponsorship of additional load on the transmission grid and power station.

4/. Potential to incorporate energy from a woodstove as required in addition to or replacement of either solar or electric power.


This system would be along the lines of :

A water tank (preferably bulkheaded top-chamber pre-heater type)

with a ply case for at least a foot of insulation (sheep fleece is good, quite cheap at the farm, and isn't made of oil -
(were you in the UK I could supply you myself)

linked to a simple kit-DIY solar water-heating panel

with a 2 or 3 kw immersion heater,

and a manual switch with an indicator light.

The questions are:

how much hot water do you want the moment you arrive home ?

and would you rather invest in additional insulation to maintain water temp.,
or in plant & energy costs for an auto-top-up of water temperature during the chosen heating periods ?

and do you wish to sponsor marginal additional transmission and generation capacity ?

Your choices . . . .

Mine are an electric wall kettle and wood-stove air-heating, waterheating and radiators whenevr required.

Good luck with the plumbing, and if it's your first go then, rub those joints till they're brilliant before soldering !

regards,

Backstop

[strider3700]

I've seriously considered the solar/woodstove/regular electric tank method to water heating. The only reason I'm thinking of going the tankless route is the fact that my bathroom is 6.5'x 8.5' with the hot water tank taking a 2'x2' or space in the corner. Thats 7% of total. Add in a washer, a dryer, the bathtub, the toilet a vanity with sink and then shelving and you quickly start looking for any possible way to get more space.

Having just looked and seeing that I only have a 100 amp main into the house I may be going back to the blow out the wall and put the hotwater tank in the closet behind the wall plan. Then drop the bucks for a stacking washer/dryer and make the shelving/storage work well.

Sometimes 700 sqft just isn't that big feeling

[gg3]

Tanada:

Ambient feed tank: brilliant idea! Though, not something to install in the main living area, because "ambient" heat really means "sucks the heat out of the air." You can do that in the basement because some of the basement's heat gets replenished with waste heat from the ground or the 1st floor of the house.

Stryder, re. washers & dryers:

Danby front-loader, about $400 US, and Danby matching 120-volt dryer (1500 watts), about $350 US. Both of these are high quality despite the low prices; they get rave reviews from everyone who has them (see www.thathomesite.com, click on Laundry). They are relatively compact in square footage, and you can stack the dryer atop the washer. Read the stuff on the website, you'll learn more about these things than you ever wanted to know:-)

Of particular relevance, the washer has an internal heating element so it heats the water it uses, to whatever temp is needed (cold, warm, hot, sanitize). The sanitize cycle is 200 Fahrenheit, which kills everything (thinking of bird flu here). People online have published info on hacking the Danby washer for higher water level if needed, so apparently this machine can be hacked in various clever ways, and that could include a way to set the thermostat to precise temps of your choosing. (I have a different Danby unit, the DTT-420, which only uses about 0.1 KWH for a 6-lb load, and I use water that's just warm enough to not be cold, and use bleach to sanitize when needed.)

Note, unless you get your clothes really dirty, you can reduce detergent dosage, and that will enable you to eliminate one rinse cycle, thereby saving more water & energy. When I use 20 ml. of detergent, I can use one rinse cycle to get all of it out (no suds in the rinse water, and clothes smell like fresh water rather than detergent). When I use 25 ml. of detergent, I need two rinses to get all of it out. Needless to say this makes me acutely aware of measuring detergent accurately.

Danby also makes a countertop-sized dishwasher, which also has various cycles including 200-degree sanitize. It's about the size of a large microwave. Heats the water it uses, which ain't much. Uses less water than washing dishes by hand, even for one person and a load every few days. I would have gotten one by now except it's just a tad too tall to fit under my cabinets. Price is also amazingly low, $150. (I think the way Danby manages these prices is they barely advertise, and they don't have to since they get so much good word-of-mouth.)

Your two main places to save electricity are a) the fridge and b) the clothes dryer.

SunFrost makes incredibly efficient fridges, but they're also way expensive, $2,500 or so. You could probably figure out a way to get a small conventional fridge and modify the heck out of it to be almost as efficient as a SunFrost. This might include building it into a larger cabinet that's super-insulated except in the back around the coils, putting mirror-finish aluminum or other material behind the coils to reflect heat away from the box, and installing a fan to push ambient air over the coils to further reduce the heat that radiates back into the box. In any case, vacuum the dust off the coils regularly; dust buildup causes a surprising amount of energy wastage.

As for the clothes dryer, first of all the Danby washer (and most modern front loaders) has a high speed spin cycle (about 1,200 rpm) which will reduce drying time a decent amount. Use an outdoor clothes line when you can. Use an indoor clothes line during the rainy or winter seasons. And if the stuff isn't totally dry after an overnight on the indoor clothes line, it'll be dryer than when it came out of the washer, so you can put it all in the dryer and it'll dry in half the time. BTW, with dryers, always use the automatic cycle, because the sensor will turn it off as soon as the load is actually dry. Whereas with timed cycles (the usual routine most people do, is "set if for an hour and forget about it until it beeps") will keep running after the clothes are dry, which is obviously wasteful. Do Not use "fabric softener sheets" or "static free" products in the dryer, they just gunk up the automatic sensors so the dryer runs longer than it needs to.

Note, indoor clothes lines will also suck up ambient heat from the air. This is good for summer cooling, but in the winter do your washing at night before bedtime and hang the stuff overnight when the house is going to be cool anyway, so you don't feel the impact of the added cooling.


Re. water heater timers (aha, finally back to the thread topic here!):

I don't keep a normal schedule or even a regular schedule. And I have a gas water heater, which of course has a thermostat, and as far as I can tell does not use any electricty. The plan for a new place would be solar backed up with on-demand electric or some variation of the plan in the last paragraph below.

The question I have about water heater timers is, if you're letting the water go through heat/cool cycles, it seems that you would have extended periods when it's lukewarm, i.e. the right temp to grow Legionnaires' bacteria. Anyone have any data on that?

Seems to me the best bet is a small water tank turned up to very hot. Then use relatively little hot water mixed with a lot of cold. This isn't a waste. Here's why: You use X quantity of energy to heat Y quantity of water to "moderately hot" in a large tank. It takes the same amount of energy to heat a smaller amount of water to a higher temp. When you mix that with cold water, the result is the same as if you'd heated a larger volume of water to a lower temp. (Think of it as "dehydrated hot shower, just add cold water to get warm water"!:-) And here, the "cold" could come in via an ambient tank as per Tanada, so it's already room temperature.

[hippiegunlover]

I just replaced my water heater last month, and mine also has the setting (someone else mentioned) that adjusts to your schedule, only heating water at certain times of the day. We use most of our hot water at night for baths and showers, so to avoid having the water heater kick on during the day, just to wash dishes, I keep a large pot of water on the woodstove. I don't even have hot water hooked up to my washer.

I am finalizing plans to build a solar water heater this spring, and i get enough sun that I could probably use it most of the year. And for the worst case scenario, I have plans to have it gravity fed to the basement bathroom shower and deep basin sink, after filling with rain water.

[Ludi]

I'm planning to install a water heater timer as an interim energy saving method while I work on the solar water heater. We'll retain the electric water heater as storage and possible backup for the solar heater. We have the water heater turned way down, since we don't need very hot water.

[alvin]

Hello, everybody,

Nowadays, the whole world is experiencing a global warming and energy shortage. The renewable energy has placed an important role in supplying energy to the human kind.

And among them, the solar water heater has brought actual benefits to us by providing the free hot water and cutting the electricity bill. I have devoted myself to this field and hope it could do benefit to you in the near future.

Any inquiries are welcome.

[aldente]

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[elocs]

I am wondering if what I am doing is worthwhile or not even useful.
My hot water heater is electric and is in a closet in my bathroom opposite the sink. I live alone and do not have a washer, so my primary need for hot water is taking a shower. I have been turning off my hot water heater after I have taken my shower (a switch like a light switch) and at least now during the summer the water stays warm enough during the day for other simple uses like hand washing. It is a small hot water heater and so it does not take long to heat up again. Am I conserving any juice by doing this?

[green_achers]

It will save electricity if the heating element is actually heating for less time each day. That would depend on the rate at which you use the water and how well insulated it is. The only way to really tell is to put a meter on it. Alternatively, you could see if there is an effect on your bill, though it might be hard to screen out the noise.

One thing that would save energy for sure is to just turn it down as far as will still do an acceptable job.

[Madpaddy]

Sounds like an electric shower would be suitable for your needs. This only heats the water that you are using. Mind you they are expensive to buy and install so this should only be considered if the heater pack up.

How is your house heated?

[Frank]

Turning it off can never hurt. The thermostat setting should be no higher than 120 degrees F. also. If it's a 240 volt heater it'll have two heating elements with covers that are easily removed to see what the t-stat is set at. If it's a 120 heater there's generally only one cover.

[Heineken]

Why not go the next step and get used to taking brief, cold showers?

Saves on the dating bill, too.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('green_achers', 'I')t will save electricity if the heating element is actually heating for less time each day. ...The only way to really tell is to put a meter on it.

[elocs]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TommyJefferson', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('green_achers', 'I')t will save electricity if the heating element is actually heating for less time each day. ...The only way to really tell is to put a meter on it.

[FoxV]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('elocs', ' ')if the savings are actually very small, is it worth the nuisance factor of maybe not having hot water when I really want it or need it?

[elocs]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FoxV', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('elocs', ' ')if the savings are actually very small, is it worth the nuisance factor of maybe not having hot water when I really want it or need it?

[Aimrehtopyh]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TommyJefferson', '.')..It could use more energy to re-heat the water each day than to keep it heated all day.

[elocs]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aimrehtopyh', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TommyJefferson', '.')..It could use more energy to re-heat the water each day than to keep it heated all day.

[WisJim]

Being the kind of guy who likes to record data, I kept track of the difference that using a timer on our water heater made to our monthly electric bill, and found that even having the water heater come on for two time periods each day (5am to 8am and 6pm to 9pm) saved enough electricity to pay for the timer in a few months and save many dollars in a year. We then replaced the electric water heater with a gas (propane) water heater and chose one with power venting and electronic ignition, partially so it could also be controlled by a timer, and have it run the same hours as we used to have the electric one operate.

I am convinced by my records of our use that it can make a substantial difference to have a timer on the water heater. If it made a difference for a household of 5 adults, it should make a bigger difference for a single person household, as you can control your usage better than I could with others using water.