RO I assume is reverse osmosis. That sounds like a great alternative to a water softener. We had a water softener before our town got Lake Michigan water, and while they may be a minor pain, they are still a pain. There’s the constant bags of salt of course. But while it sounds so nice that your water is “soft”, in reality it is just replacing calcium with sodium, and I’m not sure it’s good to be drinking water with extra sodium.
We did have separate plumbing for outdoor faucets that bypassed the water softener, I assume that’s standard practice? Don’t need to water the grass with soft water, although some people might want it to wash the car. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Lewis Bergman Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 8:35 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Water heaters I'll have to look at the brand I have. I have had tankless for about 25 years now in 2 different houses. First, the electric ones suck and I wouldn't have one. The gas ones of either type are great. I had a Bosch for 20 years and I had to clean the firing tip with sandpaper twice in that time. That location had soft water and we had no water softener. The new house has two units that are plumbed together and if the demand gets too much for one the other fires up and keeps up with the floor. Found out recently though that they are not redundant. If the first one has issues the second one never comes on. Evidently many of these forced air jobs that have PVC exhaust pipes also have filters. Check you unit before installing it so that if yours has a filter that has to be cleaned once a year like mine, you can easily get to it. If you have hard water, definitely install a water softener in front of it to lengthen its service life. My new place with the dual ones has a big water softener. I am thinking if I ever build another I might get one of those whole house RO units. They have come down a lot in the last few years and you can now get a whole house RO that puts out 500 gallons a day for a couple thousand dollars. If you are smart enough to have home run plumbing done you could have one that is a lot less expensive only supply the hot water, sinks, dish washer, and ice maker. On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 12:22 PM Colin Stanners <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: The latter brand is likely Rinnai or Rheem. I'm surprised that you saw issues with Takagi, I thought that they were a higher quality brand. On Sun, Nov 29, 2020, 11:58 AM Chuck McCown via AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I am generally the first one up. I turn on the shower then the hot water tap to brush my teeth. By the time my teeth are done the water temp has stabilized. I have a 200Kbtu heater (actually 2 of them for two parts of the house). I never seem to notice much of a temp difference when you are in the shower and someone starts something else. You can hear the heater instantly rev up when more flow is detected. Takagi were crap. Rhinni have lasted much longer. Not sure I spelled those correctly. From: Nate Burke Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2020 10:43 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Water heaters I have a tankless for 10 years now and love it. I would replace a tank heater with a tankless any time. We have semi-hard water. City water, combination of river/well. Wife would like a watersoftener, I think it's fine. For our 2 person household, it's been perfect. Once you are in the shower, you never have to adjust the temperature no matter how long you stay in. When my sister came to visit, she commented 'How do you know when to get out? The water never gets cold" However, Caveats they don't tell you about when using a tankless (At least my 10 year old model). It won't get as hot as a tank heater. On ours, you set the output temperature, recommended is 120 degrees, it will adjust the flow to get you to that temp. It can fill a tub, or the washing machine without a problem. but you notice a flow decrease when you try to do both at once. If you want to sanitize with only water temperature, tankless is not the way to go. It really does not like On/Off operation. If you are the kind of person who rinses their dishes with 1 or 2 second bursts from the faucet, it will never get hot. Our dishwasher fills like that, so it always send the waterheater into a burner ignition failure (that it recovers from as soon as sustained water is drawn) The dishwasher has it's own internal heater that raises the water temp, so that's not a problem. If your spouse turns off the shower, and you jump right in, You will have about 5 seconds of ice cold water at some point during your shower. The water that didn't get heated yet as it went through the heater as it was firing up the burner. Someone running cold water in the house has no affect on temperature, someone running hotwater will dramatically change your temp, as suddenly the hot flow is decreased until the heater burner ramps up to increase the output again. Same when the other hot flow is turned off, you will get really hot. I de-scale my heater every 6 months. They didn't tell me to do it when I got it, and it stopped working after a year. I use 5 gallons of vinegar and a 1/6hp pump in a 5 gallon bucket. The heater has built in bypass valves that make it super simple to hook up. Just let the pump run the vinegar through for an hour (there are manufactures directions on how to do it) On 11/29/2020 10:47 AM, Colin Stanners wrote: FYI, quick pricing example for the above 2x Eccotemp 45HI-NG ( I can't find the -NG on Amazon easily but just for reference here's the very similar but not compatible -LP version https://www.amazon.com/Eccotemp-45HI-LP-Indoor-Propane-Tankless/dp/B00K2XLJIW/ ) $530 USD each 2x Descaling/service valve kits (not the Eccotemp model but these seem to be compatible) https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Master-Isolator-Tankless-Pressure/dp/B07KVCFT2K/ $60 USD each 2x 4inch class III stainless steel vertical vent kits, with additional piping as needed - depends greatly on your house but I'm assuming $1000 total 1x device interconnect cable - I thought that these models were able to be ganged, can't find the serial cable to do so but I assume it'd be <$50. 1x descaling kit https://www.amazon.com/Eccotemp-EZ-Flush-System-Descaler-Cleaning/dp/B01MY7AJ9D $150 By far the biggest cost would be the labour to replace the old chimney / galvanized B vent with the new class III stainless steel piping x2. On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 10:10 AM Colin Stanners <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Steve, no feces involvement here but I've been looking into water heaters quite a bit for a project. For the hard water, instead or in addition to the water softener you may want to look into putting one of these into your hot water path. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000NKETXQ/ I wouldn't put it in the general cold water path - while polyphosphates are safe for consumption from what I can see, and I'd trust 3M to vet them well, I try to not add much to drinking water, and cold water is usually mostly what is used for drinking. Maybe check your plumbing if it's possible to add that device to the cold water path for everywhere except the kitchen sink, where drinking water is usually taken. The $80 USD price is almost "too good to be true" compared to a water softener but the reviews suggest that it works well without downsides. The cartridges are $50 each and supposedly last 6 months. If the chimney leaks it could be a simple fix to the rain cap or flashing, did you inspect it? WISP experience is at least useful for judging if it's sealed well to the roof or if the structure of the rain cap is good in strong wind. I would recommend doing lots of math before assuming a solar system can run an electric water heater for a busy family - it takes a ton of electricity to create heat, which is why tank electric heaters take 2x-3x as much time to recover from a cold tank as gas heaters. I don't think you'd want family members to wait 1-2 hours for a hot shower after someone else used all the water. As a reference, the bigger tankless heaters use a reasonable amount of gas (~150-200K BTU) but they take an inordinate, almost frightening, amount of electricity, ~36kW. Tankless math starts with available GPM (from temperature rise chart). IIRC you're in Illinois, where groundwater temp averages 47 deg F (8 deg C in the developed countries). Assuming that you want 120 deg water output from the tankless heater, that's 73 deg F temp rise. That's on the higher end for a tankless heater. If we look at the Eccotemp 45HI-NG natural gas tankless water heater, their biggest model at ~140K BTU, the chart says that at that temp rise it can do 2GPM, so one low-flow shower. If you want to run a high-flow shower and a sink, or 2 showers at the same time, you'd need to buy 2 units and the serial cable between them that allows them to run intelligently in parallel (reducing the "not activating at low water flow" problem by having just one of them, not both, operate in low flow conditions). On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 12:35 AM Steve Jones <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: You guys all do different weird shit. Went to drain my gas heater tonite (may have put that maintenance off longer than intended) We are quarry country so we have super hard water. Needless to say tanks full of baked in sediment and when I cleared the valve I may have cracked the liner, about every ten seconds I'm getting a drip on the burner, and my pop off is dripping, probably some sediment. The water heater is the only thing I have that vents hot anymore and my chimney leaks in driving rain. Is rather just bash it in and put a dumbwaiter in the chase. I have the two fresh kids that I bet would have a blast riding that. Power vent gas looks to almost double the cost. Tankless is looking almost comparable in price for gas, so I'm curious if any of you guys run them without major water softener and filters. I'm planning on solar in the next 5 or 6 years when I redo my roof so electric would be the thing I go with on the water heater after the one I'm gonna have to put in now. I like gas water heaters because I know how to fix them, parts are cheap, same with my clothes dryers. But theyve priced themselves into me looking at my options. Tankless I dont know how to calculate gpm needs. But what led to this was taking the flow reducer out of my low flow shower head and running out of hot water in 20 minutes. I start my day by scalding myself for about a half hour cause I'm a filthy bastard and need to be cleansed of my sins. We have 2 bathrooms and a girl hitting her teens, so I assume we may be getting into a shower and bath coming on at the same time and the wife knowing what's good for her and washing dishes. She wont let me put a wood stove and still in the bathroom, so wood fired shower options are out. Are residential boilers a thing? All my walls had pocket doors so I have plenty of room for radiant walls, I dont know if boiler heat it even efficient though. -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533 Cell
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