~Ben
AltE

Why is it so difficult for us to remember the joy and fundamental satisfaction of being with our family and friends, punctuated by warm silences of reading, contemplation, knitting, etc.? And why is it so easy for us to slip back to the unfulfilling and hollow of watching TV or sitting at the computer?

if it’s not too late you may wish to speak with the plumber about installing heat traps on that gas water heater. and possibly installing an electronic flue vent damper. these two measures will out shine any amount of added insulation to the outside of the tank (due to the open design of gas water heaters.)imho. we still want to insulate the hot water pipe output either way.

http://greenbuildings.santa-monica.org/pdf/wsb.pdf

http://www.high-performance-hvac.com/hvac-photos/HVACPhotos/gas_vent_economizer.html

here is a world class shower head. worth every penny!

http://www.green-logic.net/05gapermiwol.html

about my electric water heater method of operation..i never bring my 40 gallon heater up to temp, it just sits there at room temp or slightly above and when i’m ready for a shower i turn on the breaker which fires up the top 4500watt element which heats the top 10 gallons of water in the tank and then shut it off before i get into the shower. i find that ten minutes or 750wh of power is enough for a good shower with this low flow head- the thing is that i don’t want to stirr the tank much to keep the hot water on top. this .5gpm head does a wonderful job at keeping the tank from mixing. yes there are health warnings about underheated water heaters..but they also tell me to cook my $14.99/lb filet mignon till it’s well done and that aint happening!

all the best, dave

Yes, I think you’re right about energy consumption on my tank. I’ve been thinking about it since I posted the entry and now I realize that the TANK doesn’t care what water’s coming in where— the thermostat is in the same location it ever was inside the tank, so it’s just heating the water to the dial-set temperature setting as always. Luke showers is the only negative result. As of this writing, I’m still waiting on the landlord’s plumber…

Your story about your friend’s plumbing reminds me of Roseanne Roseannadanna: “It’s always SOMEthing!”

I’m a bit concerned about your heating choice at home, though. I assume you have a standard (40 gallon) electric tank. Allowing it to cool off between uses (I’m assuming no more than one shower per day, normally) means that the water MAY have the chance to cool off so much that in order to get a sufficiently hot shower you’re essentially having to add in MORE THAN the energy that would have been needed under normal, “standby” operation, just to get the water back up to the thermostat setting. Yes, there is the advantage of thermal mass, which is the tendency of an object to retain its heat, larger objects being more efficient at retention than small ones. But unless your tank is extremely well insulated, or of a very new, high-efficiency (foam-insulated) type, a 40-gallon tank would tend to lose most of its heat over 24 hours with no input.

I’ve read that some of the newer, high-efficiency tanks will lose as little as 0.5 degree F./hr. That’s very good. More commonly, I see boasts of 1-2 degrees F./hr. In 24 hrs., then, one of those tanks would lose 24-48 degrees F. Brrr! We should run the numbers and compare the energy cost of standby v. once-a-day heating. I think you may be running a losing game. But you say your electricity consumption is down? Did you isolate that change of habit to be sure it is indeed saving you kWhs? (Could the positive results have been caused by other conservation measures put in place at the same time?) Perhaps any true drop in energy use is merely a sign of how poorly insulated (i.e., old) your tank is! Not that you’d change it out on your own nickel as a renter (!), but maybe try an insulation jacket anyway, just to be sure.

Thanks for the comments…. keep reading!

Ben
AltE

ben, that’s a great one for the blog. that setup could have run for years like that without anyone noticing it. i don’t think the energy use would have been any different tho. just the comfort level. here is a very simular story in the quest for a hot shower. my lady friend recently had her hot water heater go and i replaced it with a like unit-no big deal. her comment about replacing it was “maybe now i can get a nice hot shower for a change”. i assured her that there would be plenty of hot water and set the thermostat just a hair above the normal setting. the next day she said that the shower temp was the same so i cranked the dial up a bit more. another day and still no change in the shower? i could not believe it and ran the shower for a while and it was just luke warm. i felt the hot water line out of the tank and it too hot to hold. i was stumped, and started poking around with a flashlight looking down the water pipe raceway and about ten feet down the line in the closed in raceway there it was (an in line anti scalding valve!) seems that this building once was home to a hair salon and they have a law about burning clients scalps with hot water (it’s still ok to burn them with chemicals).

here at home (my rented flat) i treat my water heater as an on demand unit. always off until ten minutes before i need it and back off just before i get into the shower. this has made a world of difference in my power usage. average daily usage of 4 to 6kwh total in a fully electric apartment.

keep the blogs comming. i think they are going to be a big hit!

cheers, dave

Your point is well taken; many cannot afford the commercial products offered to take advantage of RE (even at our great prices!). AltE does cater to the DIY market, but not at a hardware-nuts-and-bolts level; more at a “here are the commercial components, now assemble & install a system yourself” level. Builditsolar.com is indeed a great site with enormous amounts of valuable information. But for the majority of people who do not have the handyman gene (or interest or time), there are some great products on the market. I think you are mistaken about the relationship of collector size to to heatable home area square footage. Solar air heaters can be very effective. But don’t take my word or the manufacturers’ word for it: go to the SRCC for actual, tested ratings of the collectors:

http://www.solar-rating.org/

The Solar Rating and Certification Corporation is charged with comparing Download the latest PDF listing of tested collectors (water AND air collectors) and review the BTU output ratings. It’ll take some number-crunching to relate BTU outputs to square feet of home space, but I don’t think the manufacturers’ claims are unreasonable. One of our staff, Amy, has installed a solar air heater (SolarSheat 1000G) on her own house and may be persuaded to relay her system performance data. The biggest issue, to my thinking, is internal air circulation. One full-sized collector can produce more heat than is generally needed in a typical single room; getting the most out of a solar air heater comes down to the ability to circulate the collector’s output to more of the house. It’s a matter of “making hay (or hot hair) while the sun shines”, so the heat output must be “stored” in the household interior (air, furniture, carpeting, etc.) to be released slowly as the day wears on. That may mean allowing the home’s interior to become hotter than one would typically prefer in order to take advantage of the sun’s heat while it’s available. Set the collector’s thermostat at the highest possible setting and let ‘er rip while it’s sunny!

~Ben
AltE