Re: Tankless Water Heaters:

[48bencix]

Sears gas water heater

My house was built in 1946 and remodeled in 1960. I believe at that time they put in the Sears water heater. When I removed it in 2004 I looked at the label and it indicated a 1959 manufacture. So the heater was probably 44 years old, and actually still worked. I had it for about 14 of those years and only two people using it during that time. It was set at medium to low. Before I had the place, a family of up to five lived there.

I wanted to take a picture of it to send to Sears, but never did. It also had a insulating wrap on it for many of those years so cosmetically it looked pretty good. I have been trying to remember the name on the heater, it wasn't Kenmore.

I was in a kitchen of a church built in the 1940's recently and it had a Rheem "monel metal" water heater that looked original. The monel metal tanks were some sort of alloy and those tanks would almost last forever.

 

[DADoES]

This is a graph of my electrical demand in KW from midnight last night to 7 AM this morning. I ran a load of towels at 115°F (drying is also on the graph). Filled the jacuzzi tub at 110°F. A load of dishes ran @ 103°F starting at about 3 AM. The BIG spike obviously is water heating.

 

[kenmore1978]

So your tankless heater is an ELECTRIC? That would call for HUGE amount of power to be available on demand what's the wattage on it?

 

[kenmore1978]

44 year old water heater

In my experience, most tank wataer heaters actually still WORK when they are scrapped, it's just that they start to leak. The controls/burner rarely fail, and even then it's usually the thermocouple that sits in the pilot flame all the time. The tank almost always fails first.

 

[westytoploader]

By the way, the Bosch replaced a 1980 "Rheemglas" which worked well but was developing rust in the tank; not good.

 

[geoff]

Oil Heated hot water

Kenmore: in a more short version, our system has 2 different recirculating pumps. One for hot water, One for house heating. In the summer, the temp in the house is never low enough to trip the heating side of the furnace. So the furnace could run all day if it needed to on a 100 degree day and never heat the house.

 

[kenmore1978]

oil burner system

Great system. Now, is the system oil because there is no natural or propane gas available? I know there are systems just like yours that run on natural or propane gas, and oil burners require somewhat more maintnance, what with blowers and spray patterns in the firebox that have to be adjusted just right to avoid sooting and inefficiency. Interesting to see how other systems work, since here in L.A. the predominat kind of heating is gas-fired forced air systems, followed by gas floor or wall furnaces, gas gravity furnaces (like forced air, but heat simply rises by convection through ducts into the rooms, no fan), and electric radiant ceiling heat. Older commercial buildings and schools would have hot water or steam radiators, rarely seen in homes. Up until they were outlawed in the 50's, older homes would be plumbed to have small un-vented gas heaters in every room. After outlawing of these, most people went to the wall and floor furnaces.

 

[rickr]

Gravity furnaces (no blower system)

How about this for State-of-the Art home heating and air conditioning? A 1941 Lennox gravity furnace for the winter months. And a 1920's Westinghouse fan (green) plus a 1930's General Electric (black) fans for your home cooling for the summer months. (in the summer I have window a/c units really,but do use the fans for circulation.)

Rick

 

[rickr]

full size picture of the 1941 Lennox

Sorry about the tilt.If I turn the picture it moves the sides in. I put the Roto Swirl in the pix to try to capture the size of the heat plant.
Rick

 

[foraloysius]

That calls for a picture of my 'heatplant' just for the contrast LOL. The square thingy in the picture is a furnace and tankless water heater in one.

 

[kenmore1978]

oil fired tankless

Would you believe?

http://www.doctordiesel.com/waterheater.html

 

[kenmore1978]

Good site for water heating

lot of info here

http://www.water-professor.com/bradfordwhitewaterheaters.htm

 

[DADoES]

Envirotech ESI-2000

About 17" in height.

Two heating chambers, four heating elements, digital control panel.

Four elements @ 7,200 watts / 30 amps each.

 

[kenmore1978]

power rates

Wow, like I said it would take a LOT of power to keeep up with demand with an electric tankless heater. In that rate chart in my link, I see TX averages a little over 9 cents a KWH. I assume it's just you living there, if there were a family living there, the electric bill would enourmous. I assume there's no gas to the house? That's the only reason I would think they'd install an electric tankless heater. Gas is virtually always cheaper than electricity. Looks like KEntucky gets teh lowest poer rates, average 5.8 cents KWH. Hawaii residents get raped, averge 16.59 cents per KWH.

 

[48bencix]

power rates

It's interesting, a couple of years ago the price of gas on the Energy Label was $.68 per therm, now it is $.91 per therm. Look at your bill, in the winter it is often $1.00 to $1.30 per therm.

I figured that at $.08 per kilowatt hour if gas is $1.40, it is a toss-up as to which is cheaper for water heating (using some assumptions such as .60 energy factor for gas water heat) Here in Sacramento we have SMUD, a municipal utility, and PG&E for gas. Those who have PG&E for electricity, the rates are higher for electricity than the $.08 figure.

For home heating, quite often, an electric heat pump will be cheaper to operate than gas. Especially if the winter doesn't get too cold.

Because virtually every new power plant built in this country in the last few years is gas powered, we now have a larger shortage that before. (We have been importing gas for Canada for a while). Now we will be dependent on foreign suppliers, many of whom supply us with crude oil, for our gas, via LNG or liquified natural gas. Supposedly this will drop the price of gas, which may be true in the short run. I see it as nothing but bad news.

Electricity is generated from many sources, gas, coal, oil, hydro, wind, nuclear. I hope we will move to utilize more of the other sources and ultimately renewable sources. These sources will be more expensive, but more reliable then the foreign souces.

Unfortunately, NONE of the recent administrations seem or have seemed concerened about the situation that this country has gotten itself into.

 

[magic clean]

Gas VS Electric

Kenmore 1978, there is a very large new development nearby. Over 5000 homes have been built in the last 7 years. It is one of a very few fully natural gas supplied communities, since new gas service from across the Gulf of Mexico came into play about 10 years ago.

The developer agreed in a deal with the gas company that all street lighting would be natural gas and that all housing have at least a gas water heater, furnace & clothes dryer. Fireplace, range, grille and pool heaters were optional.

The gas rates here have spiralled, the homeowners associations cannot afford the gas bills for the street lighting, so it is all being retrofitted to electric with a special assesment to each homeowner. Each homeowner is obligated to change their front yard post lamp at their cost. Additionally, many homeowners are converting their gas equipped homes to total electric at significant cost due to the outrageous gas bills. It's not uncommon the have a $300 monthly gas bill in addition to your $75 per month electric bill. This would generally apply to a 3 bedroom, 2 bath 2400 sq. ft. home. Usually an all electric home of this size averages $125 to $150 per month. Electric rates here are just about 8.5 cents per KWH.

There are a lot of very unhappy people, that were sold on the economy benefits of natural gas only a few years ago to find out that even with all these addtional rework costs, electricity is still the better option.

 

[kenmore1978]

Better option

In this case, electricity IS the better option. 8.5 cents per KWH is cheap for electricity. Not as cheap as Kentucky, but cheaper than here (CA). So that's why it's good to have houses equipped for both, so one has the option if things change. I had a friend who lived in San Diego in an apartment building that had electric dryers in all the laundry rooms (very unusual, most dryers in CA are gas). Next time I went to visit him, all the electric dryers had been replaced with gas dryers, which entailed installing gas lines to each laundry room. Comes down to being a big guessing game, and circumstances could change at anytime. When CA had the big electricity crisis a couple of years ago, cost of electricity went up dramatically and while gas went up, it wasn't nearly as much, even though lot of the power plants here are run with natural gas

 

[DADoES]

There is no gas in my house. Being outside the city limits, the gas utility doesn't provide service, so it'd require a propane tank. I've always preferred electric. The neighbor (who works for the county electric cooperative, LOL) has a propane tank for his gas fireplace.

My grandmother's last three gas bills were $12, $16, and then it shot up to $54. She has both an open gas space heater and a window unit with heat. Eliminating the gas completely and running just the electric might have been cheaper overall in that case . . . but then again, maybe not, she needs the temp to be SWELTERING in winter.

 

[appnut]

Leslie, that large3 development nearby sounds like my parents 1960 one. A number of years before my parents moved out, they ended up changing their gas stret light to electric, many did cuz of the expense of running.

My cost/kwh is 10.9 cents. I live in an all electric home, fortunately with aheat pump.

As much as I love gas, I'm glad I don't have it, my monthly expenses would be much higher. I do miss gas surface cooking tho.

Since deregulation in the state of GA, Steve 1-18 told me their basic gas bill has shot up tremendously.

 

[kenmore1978]

City limits

Here, city limits mean nothing to the gas company, if one lives TOO far out in the Boonies, though, than one has to have a propane tank or go all electric. Oddly enough, one city in Los Angeles County, Long Beach, runs the gas utility themselves. Very unusual. On the other hand, several cities have municipally owned power utilities, including Los Angeles itself, largest municipally owned power utility in the country. During the power "crisis", L.A. had enough power to power the entire city on it's own PLUS sell some to other utilities in the state.