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Old 09-09-2010, 04:57 PM
quill quill is offline
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Default water heaters

This is one of my soap box issues, so here goes. I lived in Europe for many years and witnessed first hand how they heat water. It is light years ahead of us. They use on demand, tankless heating. This country says we want to be green, but staring us right in the face is an answer that would save countless of millions of BTU of energy each year if it were intuited, but no we have new light bulbs that can not even throw away in your garbage because they are toxic waste and if you put them in your garbage you could go to jail. Anyway back to the water heater. I have put 5 of these units into homes overt the last 10 years. Home Depot sells the ones I use. Made by Bosch, they attach to the wall and are about the size of an airline carry on bag. They have no electrics attached, only natural gas or propane. The ignition is started by a small generator in the water line and the unit produces hot water as long as the tap is on. When it is not in use it just sits there using no energy at all. Good for about 20 years, no tank to rust out, no energy use when you are away, no requirement to turn on/off, and maintenance free. We use maybe 20 to 30 minutes of hot water in a 24 hour period, but we heat it for the entire 24. We moved into a section of The Villages without natural gas which I believe is cheaper than LPG, but I still will be changing out our current electric hot water with one of these units run on LPG soon. Cost about $600-700. Not cheap I know but the savings over 10 or 20 years will make it back on top of the fact that you never run out of hot water. I have not come up with a good electric model in the States, as they have 240 volt service in Europe which gives them the ability to have 480 volt electric heaters (whereas we only have 120 volt giving us 2440 volt). The water will scald you if you move the knob past the safety on every shower knob. Do yourself a favor and check it out. There are many different brands available. The one at Home Depot fit my purposes. Soap box done, hope this was food for thought. Quill