But I digress...
I live in a
We also have problems with our water heater. It is on the opposite end of the house from all the everything that uses water. So, in order to take a bath in are very large "garden" tub (with no overflow drain-I might add) you have to turn the hot water on full for five minutes. Unfortunately our average attention span at this house is five minutes, (mine is -.5 min and my wife's is .875 min but we have a cat so that raises the average) so we forget the bathtub with somewhat catastrophic results. (another long story)
So, we have considered those clever point of use hot water heaters. One at the kitchen sink and one in the master bath. My theory is that this would heat the water until the water from the main tank arrived. I suppose we could keep adding point of use heaters, one for the laundry room and one for the other bathroom and then turn down the main hotwater heater.
There are many designs, 220volt, 110 volt, propane, LPG, and the one I kind of like. Which is a $150 model you nail to the side of the house that uses, a propane bottle and is made for campers and cabins. It uses D cell batteries but of course it could be modified.
I've been looking at them on and off four a couple years but I can't find the information I want on the internet. My searches seem to give me "content farms" and not the crude pages made by odd folks who do weird and interesting things, the least of which is to nail a hot water heater to the side of their
Those are the pages that give you the good information.
Anyone tried these hot water heaters?
Posts
My only personal experience was 40 years ago in Europe and I would never have one of those, but I hear the technology is much better now. My wife wants one but I feel the jury is still out. It sounds like you are stuck with bottles or electricity so this might not help but my brother who was a builder said that the ones that ran on electricity were much more expensive to run than the ones that ran on gas.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought of suspending the hot water heater above the bathtub as a decoration? You could start a new trend, get a copyright on it and become both rich and famous.
Grace and peace.
I would start by building a passive solar hot water heater. Pick up an old hot water tank (probably one behind the shop) for additional hot water storage. This will give you all the free hot water you can use for a good portion of the year, and will pre-heat it cutting your bills, when the days are cloudy, if there is any light at all.
ReplyDeleteHave you considered moving the current hot water heater to a small shed at the other end of the house?
http://graysci.com/chapter-seven/hillbilly-hot-tubbing/
ReplyDeleteenough said!
Interesting how now that I've looked at the Tankless Water Heater and Outdoor Shower, it haunts me by showing up every time I search for anything at all on Google. I will get even somehow.
ReplyDeleteWe placed an electric heater (small, under the counter) on our kitchen sink. It was the last sink on the run. I got tired of watching the water go down the drain while trying to get 1 cup for the box meal.
ReplyDeleteJust got it as a Christmas present for the little lady, so I don't know what will happen to the electric bill.
We do have friends with tank-less water heaters and they love them. Still have to wait for the heat, but it's constantly Hot then.
Thanks for all the comments. I thinking about a small on demand heater under the sink. I am going to consult a builder friend and see what he thinks about mounting the gas powered one out side the kitchen window. But, I don't know if I will do that.
ReplyDeleteMy thought was to put a small electric point of use heater under the kitchen sink and then turn down the main tank.
I really have no idea.
Perhaps solar is the way to go.
Really, I should put in a small woodstove and just pay the extra insurance rates.
Pumice, Actually the ones in Europe which didn't work all that well kind of impressed me. After living in houses where it takes 10 minutes for the hot water to reach you I have always thought the on demand European heaters would work really well, until the hot water from the REAL water heater reached you!
ReplyDeleteHey, I have one of those! It's in my barn and I use it to wash my milking machine stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt works great when it works. Sometimes the wind blows the flame out. Sometimes the water pressure is so high it won't light, or so low it won't light. Mostly it stays lit until the flame goes out and you don't notice and have a sink full of lukewarm water.
It would take a long time to fill a bathtub, but good for a 10 minute shower.
I have no other hot water near the barn so I love it. When it works. A Nony
Nothing beats hot water. Nothing is worse than a cold shower. The cheapest bills I ever had was when a friend built a unit to convert the heat from the heat pump to supplemnet the hot water tank. That saved a ton of money over 10 years. It looked the size of a hydraulc cylinder and had copper coils inside. He made it himself, a heat exchanger.
ReplyDeleteLots of ways to skin that cat in your house...
Cell phone bills ARE outrageous. They have us hooked.