VERY OT Water heaters without a tank

That's a good idea. Our tankless was in the laundry room between the bathroom and the kitchen. Ideal placement for me.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA

We used propane. The electrics are fine but they must be ganged, one right after the other, it takes three for a dishwasher.

They give a constant supply, you could run the hot water all day and never run out.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA

On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:38:49 -0400, Tia Mary wrote:

Solar is another good option, as the advertising here says "Hot water free from the sun" or something similar...

My parents have solar hot water and only need electric to to heat the water if it's been cloudy for several days in a row. It gets the water really hot, especially in summer.

We had an old electric instantaneous here when we moved in and I HATED it. When it died we replaced it with a tank and will eventually put a solar system with it.

we had one of these outside of the USA (we now live in the USA) intially when we bought the house we were a little bit anxious about it, as neither of us was familiar with them, but it worked out really well and the absence of a tank was a bonus in a tiny house! I was concerned it wouldn't run through hot water fast enough when you turned the shower on or something, but it came through fine, the only slight problem was we didn't have enough pressure to say run a bowl of water at the same time and flushing a toilet would make the shower temporarily go cold. I'm having memory issues and can't recall whether this was only a problem before we got a new boiler, or whether it was a feature of this type of boiler or a problem due to our mains water pressure - but none of this would be an issue if you are alone! I think the chances are that in the lifetime of such a boiler, that you may not save much, only break even in terms of cost, but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by directing the money in a different direction.

cheers Anne

The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes 24 years to recoup the cost.

That may be true in the UK, but every city roofscape in southern Turkey is a forest of solar heating systems. They wouldn't have sold hundreds of thousands of them in a relatively poor country if they weren't cost-effective quickly.

Probably there's not much difference in level of affluence between the average Turkish working-class apartment dweller and the average occupant of a US trailer park, except that the American is more likely to have a car. If Americans paid a realistic price for their oil, trailer parks would sprout solar heating units overnight.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

The world oil market offers it cheaper to the US?

We are having wind generators pop up a lot here in my area these days. It is really windy here and you might say they are taking off. More than a few with solar but those houses are usually built to be more passive to make it cost effective. Back in the Jimmy Carter days there were tax breaks for solar water set ups. Folks financed them when they purchased houses. They were not efficient and I wonder if anyone even broke even on them.

Most of the folks in the kind of trailer parks you seem to be referring to don't much work so comparing them to working class might not be a good choice.

Taria

Jack Camp>>>I think the chances are that in the lifetime of such a boiler,

Down to about 10-12 years in our part of Oregon, now... that will drop as energy prices continue to rise.

Kay

I read quite a bit of this thread, and it's darned interesting. I've always wanted instant hot-to-boiling water on tap in the kitchen! Will settle for an electric kettle right now .

When I was a kid, we lived in northern Minnesota and my family used wood heat. The last couple of places that my dad built had an interesting twist to the wood heater. He used a two-barrel arrangement--think of a 55-gallon drum and another drum a size or two smaller inside it. The inner barrel was the firebox. The outer barrel had a coil of copper tubing inside it. Our water supply was also hooked up to the tubing. The copper tubing, after leaving the wood stove, entered baseboard heaters in all the rooms. Also outlets to the sinks, showers, bathtubs and laundry. I come from a family of 13 kids, and I don't believe there were ever fewer than nine kids at home in those houses, and constant guests on weekends. Never ran out of hot water, and they often had windows open in the winter because the house was so warm! This was in northern Minnesota, mind you, where 30 degrees below is not unusual. The furnace room was at the back of the house, so I don't think there was a problem with the furnace heating the house up in summertime while keeping water hot. But I do remember that the baseboard heat was either on or off, no thermostatic controls. Dad liked things to be simple and efficient.

My first husband was so impressed with Dad's double-barrel wood stove that he built something similar (without the water heating arrangement) in our basement and hooked it into the vent system of our propane furnace. That setup had the advantage of keeping the floors warm all winter. He built another in his garage so he could work on cars in comfort during the winter.

Of course, any farm with a properly managed woodlot provided plenty of wood at that time. It's not practical now but the information is good to know in case hard times ever come again.

Thanks for letting me ramble on...........