Hot Water Heaters

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My brother and his wife live in my parents house now and they still have the original water heater. can't remember the name off hand but it is an electric heater and was originally on an off peak meter. He had the electrical panel redone and they the electric company took out the off peak meter so now its on standard electric rates. As a kid i remember looking at it and thought it was odd that it said rock lined. It must be a heavy unit. by the way I think it is going on about 60 - 61 years old now. My dad used to clean the drainage pipes out of the house once or twice a year by attaching a hose to the drain cleanout and running that down through the pipes to clean them out. They just don't make them like that anymore.
Jon
 
By rock lined I wonder if they meant that it was insulated with rock wool like Maytag Dutch Oven stoves were back in the day.
 
Andy your furnace sounds very cool! Take a picture of it if you get a chance. The heat exchangers were made of cast iron in most of the older furnaces. The only drawback as far is energy efficiency is how long it took to get the cast iron hot. Carrier for awhile combated this by having a dual gas valve (Low and High), and dual blower speeds. This is very popular today again with Dual Stage Gas Furnaces.

Tom you are so right. The Ruud Monel tanks and Rheem Cooper Tanks were built to last forever. Many of them are still in service.

a440++1-4-2013-08-52-0.jpg
 
Here is a Ruud - Monel Duo Temp Laundry Master still in use.
What a beautiful beast....

a440++1-4-2013-08-56-9.jpg
 
I have a modern

that is, about 6 years old water heater, Whirlpool brand, gas, 30 gallons. I usually like it well enough, but the water so far this winter has been coming in a bit cooler than usual from the main.

I pay for the gas (and electricity) and I am disappointed now. The thermostat is as high as it can go (I put it there, not the landlord), and currently, I can't even get 145F water(60-75C ??) I know it has to do with the input water temperature, but damn it, I MISS the ability to have 180F water (nearly 100C)if I am willing to pay for the gas!

Oh, well. With the track record of modern water heaters, my landlord will more than likely have to replace it in a few years.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
That's exactly what happened with our last hot water tank. Shortly after it started doing that it rusted through the bottom and caused us to replace it.

Down here this is definitely Bradford-White country. It seems that's what all the plumbing companies carry down here. If you want another brand they tell you they'll have to special order it with a 2-3 week wait time.
 
My parents had a Rheem glass-lined water heater installed shortly after we moved into the house in late Summer 1957. The original water heater was a loop in the oil-fired boiler for the baseboard heat. There was a storage tank above the boiler.
 
Brent,

The Torid Heat went bye bye in the summer of 2008.  My central a/c unit outside was acting up and I opted to have the furnace replaced with a high efficiency gas furnace since the heat and a/c were tied in together.  Tbe old GE a/c unit outside was 30 years old.  My gas bill decreased to less than one half!  Only thing is the new furnace is as toasty as the old one.     
 
Other Neat Stuff.....

The same aunt and uncle that had the Sears Homart water heater also had a cool lawnmower.  It was aqua colored.  Self-propelled.  It was a Sunbeam brand.  It had a heavy cloth leaf catcher that fit over a metal frame.  You started the engine by winding it up with a hand crank positioned on top of the engine.  That was a good arrangement as long as the engine was tuned and it had a fresh spark plug.  Otherwise it was almost impossible to start.  My aunt and uncle were very elderly and that lawnmower mostly sat in their garage and they paid a neighborhood high school kid to mow for them.  I've never seen another Sunbeam brand mower since and I have been looking.  Another aunt of mine had a self-propelled lawnmower with the same wind-up mechanism.  It was red and the handle bar grips curved inward.  It gave it a funky modern appearance.  She too had trouble starting her mower and eventually gave it to a man that worked for her.  She replaced it with a Sears Craftsman.  It was funky too in that it had an on/off  switch and a pull cord.  There was no way to adjust the engine speed.  There was no choke that I can recall.  It started every time.   It took me a while to get used to the fact that the engine speed was set and there was nothing for me to adjust once it was started.     
 
Warm Morning Water Heater

Retromania

Don't know if this is the one you mean but here is the link to more info and a picture. When I was quite young we had a coal cook stove that heated the kitchen and also supplied hot water. That was replaced with a kerosene stove (vented) and a John Wood water heater. That water heater lasted over 50 years. We had a Magic Chef gas stove for cooking along with the coal stove. It was not fun in the summer. IIRC the coal cook stove was eliminated somewhere about 1947.

Harry

http://nepacrossroads.com/about7294.html
kimball455++1-5-2013-14-00-6.jpg
 
Harry,

Thanks for the photo and info, but I never saw the Warm Morning heater that my mother described.  I don't know if it was a stove because it was either in the kitchen or back hall.  I'm not sure.  I think she said kitchen.  I know she said they had a wood burning stove for cooking and also a kerosene stove which she called an oil stove.  She clarified that for me that it burned kerosene.  Yes.  Can you imagine how HOT it must have been in the summer here in the South in a kitchen with a wood burning stove AND no air conditioning.  Speaking of hot climates.  My grandparents built a new home in 1946.  In 1950 we had a heat wave and the temp stayed around 100 degrees for a few days.  My grandfather had central air put in their home.  My parents bought the house out of the estate in 1957 when my grandfather died.  Grandmama had already passed away in 1948.  Anyway, the central air was complicated.  There was this monster of a contraption in the furnace room that droned and vibrated, etc, etc.  Outside in the yard on the utility side of the property was something called a water tower. that had to do with the air conditioning.   It made a racket also.  In the late 60's it caught on fire.  A neighbor called that that contraption at the side was smoking.  All that got ripped out and replaced with a big Carrier unit.  After all that fuss and expense of tearing out the old ac and putting in the new system my mother said it was too expensive to run and half the time didn't turn it on unless we had a heat wave.  At least we had tall ceilings and floor fans in every room.         
 
Warm Morning...

I think what She had was known in the South as a Hot Water Jack, it was a small wood or coal burning stove, with a hollow dome type top, water came in the back at the side and as it was heated rose by gravity out the top and into a storage tank.
 
Hotpoints!!!

In the old days, Hotpoints had elements that were NOT immersion units, they were bands that went AROUND the tank, not quite as fast, but LONG LASTING!!
 

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