Is gas on its way out as a cooking fuel?

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sudsmaster - OK, I see, it is a regular indoor range just installed in an unheated rec room. Right now I'm involved in designing an "outdoor kitchen" with trellis, fireplace, grill, refrigerator, warming drawer, sink, etc., and of course everything has to be rated for outdoor installation as there is no roof. I just wondered if Frigidaire had actually offered outdoor appliances once upon a time, before being gutted by WCI and then Electrolux, and forced to become a sort of bargain brand. It's just the sort of creative thing they might have done 40 years ago.

dalangdon - you might find being forced to purchase only fluorescent fixtures exiting, but I can guarantee that those of us who earn a living pleasing demanding residential clients would be in a huge amount of hurt. In particular, it would put most lighting designers and fixture suppliers out of business because clients would just go to out of state sources, not to mention local manufacturers of fixtures. Design professionals would be in the position of having to coordinate installation of potentially illegal fixtures. It would be similar to demanding that all washers sold be short cycle front loaders with no heater and no hot water inlet, so as to require short cold water washes. I don't think many here are AW would be happy with this sort of meddling in personal choice, but there is no question that such a law would save some energy.

Ultimately, as I noted, LEDs will probably be the solution here but it will take some more development. They are already starting to appear in some specialty fixtures such as step lights, and because they have exceptionally long service lifes they will be a natural for fixtures that are difficult to relamp, like a chandelier on a tall ceiling.
 
~When your duvet floats to the ceiling, that's natural gas!!
See, there is a REASON that smoking in bed is considered unwise and unsafe!

I remeber during the enrgy crisis one of the "efficiency" ideas regarding generating electricity was to replace a boiler with a car-engine "boiler" adapted to natural gas, propane, diesel or fuel-oil. The idea was to capture the "waste" heat and, as a by-pruduct, generate electricity; feed it into the grid and spin your eletric meter backwards.

Nothing is for nothing. The way this saves is that the loses at the generating station are eliminated by using that heat in individual homes.

Of course if cars ever become all-electric ths will keep a whole bunch of mechanics employed as well!

Instead of figuring out how to co-generate and/or harness the sun we are busy waging wars. TISK TISK.
 
~Some stupid state legislator has now proposed making it illegal to install any non-fluorescent (lighting) fixture!

I'll bet the SOB has a huge SUV, and keeps his house at 70*F in summer (22*C.)

Hopefully someone else will get to him/her by threatening to draft a law stating that the tax on SUVs is to be equal to 50% to 100% of the purchase price. (Since you probably can't outlaw them outright). Think he'd get the point that certain things should just be left alone?
 
Tankless water heaters are great.

Sometimes it's not the fuel, but the appliacation. I cringe whenever I see anyone install a conventional 30, 40, or more gallon water heater, of any fuel-type. I am a huge fan of tankless, or on-demand water heaters. As long as your heater is powerful enough to supply the gallons-per-minute of hot water you require, you can never run out of hot water, you will save LOTS of energy, and there is no tank to rust or fill with sediments and deposits. The best installations I have seen involve running only cold water plumbing throughout the building and having a tankless water heater for each bathroom, one for the kitchen, and another for the washer. Each water heater only turns on when hot water is needed down the line from it, meaning that when washing dishes, the kitchen heater would turn on, but the laundry and bathroom heaters would not. Also, if you place the water heaters near the places where hot water is needed, you don't have to wait for the hot water to "come up the pipe." Another advantage is that tankless water heaters tend to be very small and can be mounted against the ceiling, in a cabinet, or even under a sink (about the size of a small coffee can). Imagine if you could get rid of a conventional tank-style water heater, and in its place put a nice vintage washer.

Washers are more interesting than water heaters anyway,
Dave
 
Tankless Water Heaters . . .

are a cool idea but don't work well for every situation. The gas-fired heaters require a fair amount of clearance to combutibles (i.e., wood framing), need a source of combustion air, can be noisy on start up, and require flues of some sort. Electrics are easier to place and quieter, but still require maintenance space and of course are energy hogs.

Figure in a typical new two-story four bedroom house (three bedrooms up and one down) if you want to use one heater per bath you'll need two or three heaters upstairs (depending on whether or not the two secondary bedrooms share a bath), one downstairs for the downstairs bath, one for the powder room, one for the kitchen and one for the laundry. That is seven or eight heaters, which is a lot of money and a huge amount of space. For these reasons they usually get installed with one heater for the second story and one for the first story, which means you can't put them near every faucet. This leads to the usual water wastage while running the tap waiting for hot water. Another issue with some installations is since they heat on demand with no tank to buffer the flow, there can be a big change in water temperature if the flow rate changes. This is most likely when someone is taking a nice hot shower and someone else starts a dishwasher on the same unit: the extra flow can cause the temperature to drop. As with everything else, higher quality units work better.

For some simple situations, like a laundry room or kitchen located at one end of a house away from any bathrooms they are great. For a lot of houses, though, it is hard to beat a good super high-efficiency gas water heater with a circulating pump. It saves water and is still pretty efficient, and you only need one water heater closet. Check out the Polaris from American Water Heater Company . . . it's pricey but really puts out (the 50 gal. will heat like most 80-100 gallon units) and it is very efficient.
 
Really Saving Energy...

If one of today's nanny-state legislators would REALLY like to save some energy, they could do worse than to legislate some lasting quality into white goods and automobiles. These products take more energy to produce than they'll ever consume during their lifetimes, so every time one dies, a lot of energy is consumed needlessly in the manufacture of a replacement.

How many loss-leader appliances have lasted their owners two or three years before needing replacement? How many people have had cars like Ford Taurus and Dodge Intrepid fail prematurely over poor design quality? Today's electronically-controlled reefers are becoming notorious for premature failure, even though they're supposed to "save" energy. Instead, they create a need to go mine more iron ore and suck more petrochemicals out of the earth.

Today's politicians seem to come in two varieties- dumb and dumberer. I was absolutely aghast at the recent outlawing of trans fats in New York City. The idiot politician who pushed it through was beating his scrawny chest about what a great thing that was for public health. I got news for him- UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE COVERAGE would be a great thing for public health, not outlawing Crisco. You know- so people could actually see a freakin' DOCTOR when they're sick? Jeez Louise.
 
on demand water heaters

We have such electrical heaters a lot here in Germany as they are easy to install, cheap in buying and small...
BUT: they have usually an intake of min. 18Kw to max. 27Kw at 400V AC!! I hate them!
There are several kinds of. The simpliest have just two switchings half and full power, ours, a more convenient one, has 1 and 2 setting (18KW and 21KW) which are again divided into two switchings by the water-pressure, namely half and full power (9KW resp. 10,5KW), depending on how far the tap is opened. In the summer often even the 1 setting is too hot to shower although you turn on a lot of cold water at the mixer-tap. In winterime when water is very cold (will not happen in the future anymore because of the global warming and mild winters!!!!! lol) even 21KW are sometimes hardly enough to get the shower temperature higher than 38°C - and I like it at 40°C!!
Also you mustn't open another hot water tap at the same pipe or the person under the shower will have a cold shower at once... Also it takes ages to fill a bath tub!
Gas on demand heaters are better as they use natural primary energy not tertial one like electricity (remember 1KW/h needs 3KW/h to be produced!!) but have the same disadvantages with water-pressure and stuff like the electric ones....
Best is: solar collectors in combination with re-growing fuel driven heat-source (bio-gas or bio-mass fuel) and a well insulated boiler/tank.
And it is sooooo cheap to run!
But states would not get much tax....
And concerns and oil-companies and power-stations will loose profit...
And societies will become less dependable....very bad to handle then...politically spoken!
Ralf
 
We recently replaced all of our galvanized plumbing with PEX and replaced the 50 gallon electric water heater with a gas tankless by Bosch. The change has been amazing: Real water pressure, instant hot water, and the ability to run the dishwasher, washing machine and at least one shower at the same time. (Maybe more, we haven't tried it yet.)

Of course, our house is fairly small, and the plumbing is pretty close together (stacked bathrooms, kitchen above laundry) so the hot water doesn't have far to go.
 
Best of both worlds.

My brother-in-law was nervous about adequate hot water with four females in the house, two top-load washers, two dishwashers and 4 bathrooms. (Three wtih bathing facilites.)

There is an instantaneous tankless hot water heating coil coil in the oil-fired steam boiler. The heated water (for taps) then flows to a 40 gallon (read: smallish) storage-type gas-fired taditional hot water heater. They have never yet run out of hot water at the taps.

Fuel oil is traditionally deen as less expensive than natural gas in this area, so this set-up seen as a matter of economics as well!

I still find it fascinating that he comes to ME for advice on these types of things. He is an electrician by trade.
 
Quote from linked article:

"But gas-fired tankless heaters are only available with standing pilot lights, which lower their efficiency. In fact, the pilot light can waste as much energy as is saved by eliminating the storage tank."

HA! Why did I think you had to install batteries for spark-ignition in some models?

Loading…

hes.lbl.gov
 
Structured plumbing is the key!

I'm sure the utlities appreciate the huge spike and changes in demand over a few minutes rather than the steady use of energy in a more conventional system, which BTW tends to use less energy (gas or electricity) at a time.

Remember boys and girls, NYC has such high electrical rates for a number of reasons, including peak demand that is very hard to meet.

Loading…

www.waterheaterrescue.com
 
Toggle, yes - The majority of Seattle's electricity (60%, I believe) comes from the city-owned dams. The main reason we chose the gas tankless was because it was small and - yes, I admit it - looked cool. Plus, we got a big tax break for it.

Our particular model does not have a standing pilot. Which will suck when the power goes out, but that doesn't often happen in Seattle (knock on wood)
 
"But gas-fired tankless heaters are only available with

That claim is just flat wrong. I'm a bit disappointed that it comes from LBL (Lawrence Berkeley Lab) which has an otherwise fine track record on residential and business energy conservation research. But it looks like LBL was quoting another agency's publication, "Home Energy Magazine". And if you poke around a little, it's apparent that the article dates from 2001; not exactly current dogma.

From your first link, there is this statement:

"An alternative to the standing pilot light is an intermittent ignition device. This resembles the spark ignition device on some gas kitchen ranges and ovens. You should check with the manufacturer for models that have this feature."

I see no reason why any tankless system bought these days should have a standing pilot. It's just old, outmoded technology.
 

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