Comments on: Happy NODWISH™

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:05:51 +0000

In reply to Badtux.

Case in point – in April after a lot of research I bought a window air conditioner. I paid 40% more for it than the ‘popular’ model because of its efficiency rating and features. By August I had recovered the total cost of the unit in lowered electric bills. I had the cash to buy it, but if you are living month to month you can’t come up with it. You literally can’t afford to save money.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:43:33 +0000

I notice that it is always the relatively well-off who are driving a Prius, and those who can least afford gasoline who are driving a fuel-guzzling old car. Because the Prius costs $20K even used, while the gas guzzler can be purchased for $500 on Craigslist. Yet another way that our economy punishes the poor, sigh.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 05:17:09 +0000

If you have money, you can live cheaply, because you can afford the most efficient systems.

And ain’t that just the truth m8!! *sigh*

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:47:54 +0000

In reply to hipparchia. Roger that, Hipparchia. If I had the cash to build a house down here, I would include a generator in the design, as well as whole house surge protection, and filtered power for the computers. The powered water heater would be a supplement to the solar system, and any southern roof area left would have solar panels on it. If you have money, you can live cheaply, because you can afford the most efficient systems.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:37:41 +0000

Talking about hurricanes and electricity, you are aware that on-demand tankless water heaters need electricity to power their electronics and exhaust fan, right?

that’s why we have natural gas generators!

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:20:27 +0000

Talking about hurricanes and electricity, you are aware that on-demand tankless water heaters need electricity to power their electronics and exhaust fan, right?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:32:39 +0000

In reply to Badtux.

Natural gas it the only way to go in hurricane country, and the required ¾-inch line is standard. The problem is sizing, as I don’t take long showers, don’t generate a lot of laundry, and don’t have a lot of dishes to wash. A 30-gallon hot water heater is over-sized for my needs, but the 40-gallon heaters have become the standard, and that’s what everyone seems to design for, and maximize their engineering for. They are cheaper than the smaller models, especially anything smaller than a 30-gallon.

The same thing is currently true of the on-demand systems – they are over-sized for my needs.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:25:28 +0000

The problem with the tankless systems is that you have two choices — at-destination electric ones, which are inefficient, require very large wires to the house feed and if you use multiple hot water faucets at the same time you could cause a brownout of your home or a central breaker tripping, or whole-house gas ones, which may require the gas company to upgrade your gas feed line to get enough gas to make it actually heat water on demand. And the whole-house gas ones aren’t *that* much more efficient than a tank-type water heater with adequate insulation because of the fact that they need such a large burner to heat the water sufficiently fast for maximum water usage flows and regulating the water temperature requires running that large burner at inefficient levels if you aren’t using the full capacity of the heater.

The Europeans typically use the at-faucet electric heaters because their homes were originally plumbed only for cold water (due to indoor plumbing being installed prior to the invention of running hot water, duh), and it’s easier to tee off a cold pipe at a sink than to run a whole second set of pipes through a stone or concrete building. Wiring typically ran through the coal gas conduits for the gas lighting in order to provide electrical lighting and etc. in the home so that wasn’t a problem, but a second set of pipes for hot water would be. But the Europeans do a lot of strange things like that because of the age (and inflexible building materials used) of their homes, such as under-counter clothes washer/ventless dryer combo machines, that aren’t more efficient than the way we do things here, just different.

There is of course another consideration here in earthquake country, which is that an earthquake could cause 40 or 50 gallons of scalding hot water to pour out despite the “earthquake straps” that all our water heaters have here. I looked at the straps on my water heater. They’re strapping it to a couple of 2×4 studs using wood screws that are nowhere near sufficient to hold it against those studs, not to mention that if the house sloshes the wrong way, the water tank is heavy enough to pull those studs right over. But it’s a rental (shrug)….

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 06:11:46 +0000

Changing out those sacrificial anodes is a major PITA. It requires an odd sized socket, a breaker bar, a three-foot pipe to increase the leverage of the breaker bar, and a way of keeping the water heater from moving when you are breaking it free. To handle the pressure, that sucker is really torqued down. You need to do it every two years down here, unless you have soft water, then you can wait five years. The replacements last a lot longer than the ones in the new units.

There is a noticeable weight difference between the old water heaters and the new ones. If I was building a house today, I would use a tankless system. They are more efficient and you don’t have to worry about the 40-gallon flood if something goes wrong.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:02:47 +0000

One more observation — Googling for Rheem, I see that they’re actually owned by a Japanese consortium now. That probably accounts for the higher quality of the furnace in this duplex compared to what I expect from a typical American “cut quality to the bone for quarterly profits” company.