"INSTANT ON" WATER HEATERS

I don't know about that, but it sounds like a smart idea, perhaps depending on your usage re times to heat the mass of water..

I had one in my cabin called a "tankless flash water heater" It was under the kitchen sink and only heated water right at the sink (not household)

we have gas hot water heater and it's very good and very efficient. Of course they occasionally explode and turn your home into a blazing inferno but hell.... life's a chance...M-O-O-N... that spells chance.

Bosch is the big name in tankless, on-demand hot water heaters.

http://www.tanklesswater.com/category.asp?search=bosch&adword=bosch%20hot%20water%20heaters&gclid=CMabl4PFl4oCFRwtSgodx2xagg

Overall, these things got a bad rep back in the 70s when oil prices skyrocketed. The technology at the time just wasn't up to the task. People would try to run two or three bathrooms plus their kitchen off of them and they just couldn't kick out enough hot water to do the job.

The newer systems are very efficent and are able to keep up with demand. You do have to make sure you choose the right size unit though. The electric units aren't as capable as gas units. Generally, the gas units can produce twice as much hot water as a comparably sized electric unit.

I'm waiting for my current hot water heater to die so I can replaced it with a natural gas Bosch unit. Being that teh house isn't really suitable for more than 2 people to live in and there is only one bathroom and the kitchen to deal with it seems like an ideal situation. Hetaing a 40 gallon tank all day long every day is a massive waste of energy.

Such is used here (= Germany) mostly in offices or smaller apartments, because it is thaught to be too expensive/unifficient.

Our central (oil= heating systems are (nearly all) with geothermal exchange heat pump and (mostly) low temperature blowers.

During the summer/warmer months, we don't need as much oil for warm water (for five apartments = 5.400 sq ft) as we would need with electric hot water boilers. (We regulate the water temperature seperately to the heating temperature.)

But I suppose, since prices for energy are different everywhere, results may be different as well.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12820

Thanks for that link fishin'!

I forgot to mention in my above post that we do have (I think since 10, 20 years everone) the heat pump used for warm water as well.

I had one while stationed in Germany in the late sixties. It really was instant, and boy was that water hot. It was gas, and you had to light it with a match each use. A pizoelectric ignition would be a natural. I don't know what the real efficiency was, but the less often you use hot water, the more sense it makes.

Craven had an electric model in Brazil. Sadly, the electric service wasn't that reliable at that time. I seem to recall he complained of electric shocks in the shower, but not sure that's a real memory.

Thanks for the info and the links. Im going to look over these Bosch units.
Walter, when we had our house channeled for AC about 15 years ago, I thought of a geothermal system (seemed appropriate and all). However, all the homes I visited with closed loop systems were never really warm enough to be called comfy,and our home, being about 250 years old (1763 ) has very thick stone walls that act as a thermal mass well into the heating season. However, when it stays cold for very long , like weeks, we need to heat the air around us. So cutting down the oil by changing over to a gas "instant on" seems a good solution.

I think the system we have is a "combined" one.
(Father-in-law installed his by himself - looking for the warmest/sunniest part of the house. Result: it never got warm inside at all.)

Interestingly, they are considered here to be ... low average.

Vaillant iss THE first choice, but:

By "big name" I didn't mean "best". They are the most widely available and have the largest market share (in North America anyway...).

I am willing to sacrafice some efficency for parts and service availability.

Most of the companies selling tankless systems in the U.S. are European btw.

Hmm, they can't sell them here a lot .... due to energy saving regulations, energy efficiency classes etc.

farmerman

We've got one of those tankless, instant hot, never run out water heaters.

Advantages...you really DON'T run out of hot water, really.
It's nice to be able to have more than one water using appliance, thing going, and not be shorted on hot water.

As far as instant hot water? Well....I dunno about that. The shower I use is quite a distance away from the unit, so no way is the water instantly hot.

In addition, I had to get used to turning on the kitchen faucet with the lever to the cold side if I was just trying to get a pot of water or something. If it's even just turned to the middle, I'll hear the knocking of the water heater starting up. As soon as you turn the faucet to cold, it stops.

All in all, I really like it.

the oldest instant gas hotwater unit dates back to 1895 !
it was called the 'geyser' after its inventor .


as far as i know , most new houses in canada are still supplied with a traditional hotwater tank - ours is now about 30 years old . it had an extra insulation blanket installed and the local utility says it's still quite efficient .
instant water-heaters seem to be mainly used in cottages around here .

a difference between canadian and german washing-machines is , that canadian machines usually do not have a heating unit , but german washing machines - from what i remember when visiting the in-laws - seem to have a heating element . the unit at the in-laws also served as a clothes dryer - it seemed to be extremely slow in drying clothes - but probably very efficient .

the instant-on heaters didn't do very well when they first came on the market here .
in that respect they got the same bad name that 'ultra-high efficiency' gas furnaces got when they first came on the market about ten years ago .
i recall that furnaces were being turned off in the middle of the winter - a canadian winter ! - because of security concerns , such as melting plastic parts (and replacement units were not available for months !).
they seem to have a tough time gaining people's confidence again .
a similar disaster was the 'plastic' plumbing that was supposed to be superior to copper plumbing , but within a year many of the plastic pipes burst and caused millions of $ in damage .

the problem imo is that the guarantees are not good enough on many new products to allow a home-owner to take a chance . if something goes wrong , the customer is often left holding the bag (and who can afford to go to court over a few thousand $ - and it'll take ages to settle ) .
so usually people will stick with something proven(and that includes us) - even if it's less efficient .

i've seen a new type of geo-thermal heating system that does not use a 'grid' system but uses 'deep-well' type pipes to extract heat/cold from about 50-60 feeet below ground .
it looked pretty good , but ... to convert a 1,200 to 2,500 sq, ft. house costs about $25,000 ! that may be ok when you buy a new house .

i recently read that in sweden (?) the utilities companies will install all kinds of energy saving devices in a new house and 'mortgage' it , so that the costs can be repaid over the lifecycle of the equipment - that may be a reasonable solution.

in the meantime us tough canucks huddle around the campfire for warmth
and eat seal blubber :wink: .
hbg

hamburger. When Walter was talking about geothermal , I thought he meant the "well style" Weve had them here in the US for about 30 years. The last jump was a "closed loop system where a borehole of about 8" id is drilled and a plastic "loop" of PVC filled with an ethanol and antifreeze mix is poured. the open top of the loop is connected into a pumping system that circulates the antifreeze alky around so that it exchanges the cold solution in the ground mass and then the warmed solution (about 50 to 58 degrees in the US south of very northern MAine or Montana is run through a heat exchanger that grabs the heat and runs through a venting system into the house. AS I said, it never gets cozy and Ive seen em turned up to about 75, while theair coming through the vents feels warm at that spot, the air loses its heat rapidly and then you feel like a cool breeze is blowing in the house.

I did some thermo calculations and to really be providi ng adequate heat flow, you need a thermal mass of about a 300ft well for each ton of heating
capacity. Around here they size em for 15o ft per ton and thats just not enough. Anyway, for my house Id need about 7 or 8 tons (My engineer friends differ so Im saying 8 tons. That would mean Id need about 8 300 ft wells. Drilling boreholes around here is about 50 bucks a ft for an 8" cased borehole, so the wells alone would be 12 grand and the system and loops and concrete would be a total of about 30K . Thats not good enough to reap any returns. I can chop firewood for that little extra heat .
However, we pay about 550 a month to heat and get hot water and Im trying to conserve . We have a huge nat gas tank for the grain dryers and the cooking stoves and a propane heater for the lambing shed, so the instant on hot water heater makes some sense.


PS, I thought that all dish washers had booster heaters. ANd clothes dryers have heaters built in. We have a restaurant style Hobart dishwasher (we did a lot of dishes in the kid days) Now we use the damn thing once every couple days and truthfully, Id like to pull the damn thing out cause it sounds like a buzzing slosh mashine.

Now that you got me on kitchens, We have some friends that spent almost 300000 just on a new kitchen at their new very elaborate retirement place and the most they do for supper is eat out. Whatta waste. Americans love kitchens as "toys" Id love to redo ours into a simple place like my great -grammas kitchen with the old fridge with the stack of pizza tray thingies on top. That was a warm kitchen and it had a water heater inside that you lit with a match and the water heater actually could heat the room. There was a window behind the water heater that could open like a porthole so you could let the hot air out in the summer.

chai-Thats it, I havent heard any downsides. (Hamburger has to realize that everything is operated by modular computer controllers nowadays) I dont think that the "cyclone unit" is available any longer. From my searching around today, Weil Mclain now makes one of the "instant water heaters" I see. My parents had an old weil Mclain heater boiler in theirlast house when I was a kid and it was the size of a pickup truck. Now ours is as big as a large suitcase and It heats this big old house plus does the hot water.

sorry for messing up the thread !
the picture was about 4x6 on the website - it sure got blown up out of all proportion !
sorry !
hbg

i'm a bit of a dumbbell when it comes to technical things , so the 'deep-well' system might well be 300 feet deep .
we got a quote about 10 years ago for a 'grid-style' thermal unit before replacing our furnace . the quote was well over $10,000 and since we only have a small house of about 1,100 sq. feet it just didn't make any economical sense . we still would have had to have an auxiliary heating system for really cold winter days - like right now ; it's been minus 15 to 20 C overnight and apparently it will continue for a while .
it's been nice and sunny , though - makes all the difference .

Re: "INSTANT ON" WATER HEATERS

(Just surfed into this thread)

"Instant on" heaters are one energy-efficient alternative to what you now have. Another one -- the one I have at the moment -- is an electrical heater with a tank that heats its water at night. This saves energy because electrical power plants have to run through the night. It's inefficient to shut them down every night and power them back up every morning. On the other hand, demand is too low at night to absorb the energy power that plants will produce. Thus, by heating your water at night, you use barely any energy that wouldn't be produced anyway -- which is why electricity is very cheap at night at most places in Germany.

If the same is true in Pennsylvania, a storage heater that works only at night may be a good alternative to an always-on heater.