CountryByNet.com Forums :: Tankless Hot Water Heater

Egon, I wasn't kidding... A house that approximates a sphere has potential for more efficient networking/distribution of its utilities. A house that is long and skinny or otherwise departs greatly from a sphere is less efficient in that mannar. Of course there are other considerations such as you denizens of the frozen north are aware, such things as minimizing the surface area for a given volume to better retain heat in the winter (again a sphere is the best at this.)

Those farther south than I are more interested in cooling and if trying to avoid mechanical refrigeration need to increase the surface area for a given volume.

Unfortunately I am in a mixed climate area and have to design to handle both (darn.) We have both significant heating and cooling loads. The new house looks somewhat long and narrow (ignoring the 45 degree bend.) Actually the utilities are consentrated more toward the central core so it isn't too bad. I timed the delay from turn on till hot water arrived at the master bath and it took 1 1/2 minutes to get decently hot water. This is without the recirc pump operating (and much better than my mom's "long house") prior to the recirc pump install.

About the map... a carpet installer got lost... twice... today in the new house. Maybe I should put colored lines on the floor. To go to the bath room follow the yellow line, to go to the shop follow the blue line, to go to the basement patio follow the smell of meat being cooked to perfection over a GAS GRILL.

Anyway to comment on the topic of interest... there are tradeoffs on tankless, i.e. "instant" water heaters versus the storage type. If you use very little hot water the standby losses of a storage tank are a significant percentage of the operating costs but in actual dollars (not a percentage) it isn't a big deal, especially with a well insulated tank (or add your own extra insulation.) The initial cost of the tankless is pretty high, especially if you need to be able to ever supply 3 or more uses at the same time. If your hard water plugs up the works in a tankless that is an expensive situation. Around here some folks don't get over about 3 years on a storage tank type water heater. That would be a really bad deal if you had to replace tankless ones anywhere near that often.

I could have gone tankless for the "final" heater but went with 40 gal propane instead. Its water supply is a 50 gal lifetime guarantee electric water heater without its electric elements wired up. The water in the electric is heated by a flat plate heat exchanger and has a circulatioin pump to circulate water from the hot water storage tank on the geo unit. This brings the 50 gal to about 115F and makes the gas units job easier. I would like to be able to use from the 50 gal directly to fill the jacuzzi etc but 115F is not hot enough to ward off "legionaire's" disease organisms and such. Setting your DHW to too low of a temp is inviting health problems, especially with storage tank type units.

Maps? We don't need no stinking maps... we got a good deal on small portable GPS units which we can issue at the door.

Pat

"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

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