Water heaters.

Quote: Nareed

Are you familiar with the phrase "quality of life"? I can shower in ten minutes most times. I will not turn off the water and freeze myself in the meantime.

I am wrestling with the same problem at my parent's house. The current system is full of old water heaters and ancient washing machines and seems grotesquely inefficient and is costing roughly $1K per year. It's a four full size bathroom house, but is not normally used anywhere near capacity.

The next system may well have to serve my parents until they are age 90. While at the moment my father takes showers at the gym, he may not be able to do that in the future. If my mother gets hurt she like a hot bath. While the tankless systems have numerous sizes to them, it is hard to calculate since the worst case scenario is a full house in the dead of winter (at Christmas). It is hard not to want the biggest system that is made.

Quote: pacomartin

The next system may well have to serve my parents until they are age 90.

When my grandmother needed a new fridge to replace her vintage one, my dad got her one with the understanding he'd keep it after she died. I know it sounds ghoulish, but that's often the best course of action short of moving the folks to a rest home.

Quote: pacomartin

You can resort to the old military rule: soak yourself, then turn off the water for four minutes while you soap yourself, then wash off. That will do far more than anything you are doing by turning the tank on and off.

Yeah, thinking on it, I fail to see that there would be any savings.

Let's look at the situation. You wake up earlya nd turn on the shower. This causes the water heater to turn on. After a few minutes, the water is hot enough for a shower. You go in and get wet, then shut the water off. The water heater will remain ion for the two or three minutes it takes to soap yourself, though. then you turn the water back on, rinse, turn it off and walk out.

See, no savings at all.

Anyway, I'll be calling the plumber in to look at the system. I've let the water heater go to the max temp, when it shuts down by itself, and the water does start out hot. But it doesn't stay that way long enough for the 10-15 minutes required. When we first moved to the apartment, my shower didn't get any hot water at all, though turning on the hot water did cause the heater to turn itself on.

I read that some people are going back to coal. Coal was very common in the 1960's to heat a home. It was extremely dirty and used up a big part of the house.
I don't know what it was like in Mexico, but I am not familiar with coal deposits in Mexico.


Pellet stoves are popular. They usually either burn wood or corn. Some versions are designed to heat water as well as the house. The pellets are treated somehow so that you don't have a lot of dirt.

Mex City, in particular the suburb I'm in, don't really get cold enough to justify a stove or furnace. A few poeple do have central heating, but it's very rare. My odl hosue did, but we never used it as far as I can recall.

But it does get cold. A typical January morning can be 5 C, warmign up to 15 C in the afternoon. it might warm up more, to say 20 C, too. That's why people wind up wearing layers they can take off and put back on at the whim of the weather. Some people have space heaters, suually electric. I have one in my room. Poorer people will burn charcoal or wood in anafres (look it up). This is a dangerous practice that invariably results in deaths by CO poisoning.

I don't know what they do in colder climates.

Fixed it! :)

Well, it was actually the doorman who did it. Best 100 pesos I ever spent. he came up to light it up (long story), and found the temp control was loose. So even when you turned it up, it didn't turn the thermostat or whatever up. One drop of crazy glue and ten minutes later it was fixed. Now I have to turn the temp down when I shower :) Good thing, too, seeing as how it was 6 C yesterday evening.

Domestically, water is traditionally heated in vessels known as water heaters, kettles, cauldrons, pots, or coppers. These metal vessels heat a batch of water but do not produce a continual supply of heated water at a preset temperature. The temperature will vary based on the consumption rate of hot water, use more and the water becomes cooler.



plumber in sydney

Quote: reilly12

blah blah blah + link

this really looks like a lame attempt to spam. For some lame plumbing outfit!

really?

tell me I'm wrong.

I would have thought that in Mexico everyone just did without hot water until the sun heated it. Roosters? Key West and Miami have similar problems. Sometimes they are thought to be touristy and therefore of value but residents hate the alarm clock.