Comments on: Hot Water

By: etbe

etbe — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:22:36 +0000

Comments about this topic (or any other) that merely advertise products or services will be deleted without anyone reading them.

If you make an informative comment that also happens to include a single URL about the services your company offers then it has a good chance of being approved.

By: etbe

etbe — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:12:12 +0000

Eduardo: I’m not aware of a distributer in Australia, maybe if you send them an email they will be able to point you to one.

But Adam Shand’s comments make me believe that solar hot water is the best option if you have roof space for it.

By: Eduardo

Eduardo — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:28:26 +0000

The “gotankless.com” do they have a distributer in Australia?
Is there more brands of tankless system in Australia?

Kind regards

Eduardo. Tirado

By: Adam Shand

Adam Shand — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:59:23 +0000

VE: Absolutely, but when there are things that it’s easy for you or I to do, I like to know about them and do them. Being able to do little things is often a way to combat the helplessness that some people feel in the face of the problem.

By: VE

VE — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:20:37 +0000

Adam: for dry pasta requiring let’s say 13 minutes you just boil for the first minute and then you let it sit unstirred for the remaining time or until it is soft to your liking.
A little less CO2 is emitted.

But don’t get me wrong, citizens can do a lot for reducing CO2 emissions and mitigating climate change, but the results will only be visible when the big industry will change their attitude (oil companies, power generation, automotive industry).

It’s too easy to blame households to over-boil pasta or over-illuminate their rooms, isn’t it?

By: Adam Shand

Adam Shand — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:22:59 +0000

VE: Can you cook dried pasta like that or only fresh pasta? I didn’t realize that will work, I’ll give it a try next time!

By: VE

VE — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:09:30 +0000

Russell: this may surprise you but I presently work for the tenth steel maker worldwide (in order of Mt/year of steel produced). It s true that steel is highly recyclable. This is done by remelting the scrap steel it in Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF). One medium sizes EAF has a yearly electricity demand comparable to that of a 300k households. It’s one of least energy-efficient industry.
Steelmakers push on windfarms like chemical companies push on solar cells: believe me, it’s all about big money. When talking about the energy content of any object, we should only use a cradle_to_grave approach (scientist call it Life_Cycle_Assessment).

I don’t know the way Australia is dealing with windfarms, I’ll tell you what happens in the EU: huge public money is contributed to build the windfarms to clever guys who go to small city councils in the middle of nowhere and convince them it is “for the environment”. There’s never a scientific assessment if the yearly average wind speed justifies the investment. You’ll find wind mills in the least windy places. Crazy.

One good thing we can do “for the environment” is promote a policy of “sustainable decrease”. In the case of hot-water, we should decrease in a smart and thinkful manner our level of consumption of hot water irrespective of the way we heat it. And this reasoning should apply to whatever we consume.

Hot water example: in Italy (my country) every household will boil about 3 litres of water for 15 minutes twice a day using methane as fuel for cooking pasta. Bloody heck, you just need to bring the water to the boil, throw the pasta in and SHUT OFF THE GAS and pasta will cook at the exact same way without boiling till the end. We’re not smart, we’re not thinkful and we consume more hot water than we actually need…

By: etbe

etbe — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:21:09 +0000

VE: Steel can be recycled and wind farms will last for a long time with little requirement for new steel in the maintenance. Wind power is rapidly being adopted in most countries, and in Australia it is possible to pay a little extra to get “green electricity”.

Adam: That’s a really good point. However if you have a disconnected solar PV system on your home then the batteries will be able to supply that power with ease. Also there is talk of using a Prius (or similar car) as a home battery. The battery in a new Prius could handle two of the tankless hot water systems at the same time!

Craig: CO poisoning should not be an issue, but there was a report on the Australian TV news a few years ago of a woman dying while having a shower from a hot-water system (presumably tankless if it turned on when she had a shower).

By: craig

craig — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:58:01 +0000

continuous hot water systems have been around for years. i’ve had gas ones in the last few houses i’ve lived in (at least all of the last 15-20 years). they’re great. much cheaper to run than tank systems, they use energy only on demand, and they NEVER run out of hot water, no matter how many mooching sponges you have crashing in your house on any given weekend.

i’d never have a tank hot water system again.

our current unit provides hot water for both bathroom and kitchen.

carbon monoxide poisoning is not an issue, either. indoor units have a flue taking exhaust gases out through the roof, or they can be mounted on an external wall of the house (e.g. bathroom)

By: Adam Shand

Adam Shand — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:14:50 +0000

Tankless hotwater systems are moderately common in New Zealand, and I love them for all the reasons mentioned above.

However, I was recently at a conference and was extolling their virtues when an engineer who works on the national power grid stopped me and said that actually they are a huge problem from an energy (electricity or gas) provisioning point of view.

His argument was that because …

* most hot water is used in fairly narrow bands during the day (morning showers, evening showers and clean up)
* the *throughput* of energy required by a tankless system to make hot water on demand is huge (compared to the requirements for keeping a tank hot)

… tankless systems would cause widespread issues with the gas and electricity delivery systems if the majority of the houses used them.

Which is a shame, because I *love* them :-(