Hot water

[bobemm]

• I ran into a2andy in the hall yesterday and he said "You look perky...no, you look like you're going to kill somebody." I've been told that my moods are largely indistinguishable, but I think he was kidding. (It was the latter.)
• My water heater has forgotten how to stop heating my water. It's nearly 25 years old, so I suppose it's probably getting senile. My first instinct is to try to fix it, but really, I'm not even going to bother looking for a suitable control module. Unless - have they stayed the same for the past 25 years? Anyway, this is all very horrifying, because the basement is turning into an appliance graveyard. In fact, the old water heater that was replaced 25 years ago is still down there. You'd understand if you saw the "stairs".

  So I guess I need to figure out what kind to buy. I'm sort of wary of the tankless ones because I don't know if they last as long, and they cost more than twice as much, but they're 95% efficient as opposed to 92%. The difference seems small, but I'm sure it pleases mother nature nonetheless.

[Poll #933796]

Comments

[chucknoblet.livejournal.com]

Something indeed seems to have happened - in the first year I was in that house, there were several power outages, one for several days. In the last year, I don't think we've had any.

These are two examples -

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=89263-1136-AE-125&lpage=none
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=89263-135-E3F50RD045CV&lpage=none

The tankless at least claims to be equivalent to a 40 gallon tankful. The current beast is 52 gallons and seems more than sufficient.

[qmrf.livejournal.com]

Well, but equivalence is difficult. You can take a shower while running the dishwasher with a tanked heater, and draw down water faster than it's being replenished - but only for a while. The tankless keeps delivering the same flow of water forever - so you can't do bursts of heavy use, but you can use it at maximum rate forever. So that's another consideration - do you often use hot water for multiple things at one?

Remember the energy efficiency income tax credits, too - $300 for a qualifying water heater. Whichever style you get, make sure it gets you the credit.

[chucknoblet.livejournal.com]

This is true. I generally don't use hot water for more than one thing at a time, but it's nice to have the option.

I just can't decide. Perhaps I should instead focus on creating a machine that helps decisions make themselves.

[randomcub.livejournal.com]

There's also the option of getting both-- a tank hot water heater for general use, and a small tankless that, if you ran out of hot water in the tank, would then kick in to augment.