Energy Technology that’s good for the planet…and your pocketbook.
There are a lot of things we can do as consumers to benefit the environment, but there are very few that can have as much positive impact on the planet as conserving water and energy. That also means you save money on your water and energy bills. And, it will likely qualify for a energy saving tax credit from the feds. What could be better?
What is this magical product, you ask? It is a simple household appliance that we all should be converting to willingly, and likely will be willingly or no in the next 10 years. It is none other than the tankless water heater. The tankless water heater is already mandated throughout Europe, where water and energy resources are especially scarce. Why is this so important to us? For several reasons, not the least of which is that it will slow our consumption of water drastically. Cate Blanchett can take all the 2 min showers she wants, but it can’t compare to half a millon households in every major city in the western United States drawing on only the water they use during the day, instead of storing 50-70 gallons a day in a metal tank. The less water that gets pulled out of the ground, the more groundwater for left for nature. Think of your water tank heater as withdrawing money out of interest bearing investments and redepositing instantaneously it to cover your withdrawls as you incur them, for the sole purpose of keeping your balance at some fictitious number you will never spend.
The second benefit, obviously, is the energy savings of not maintaining the water temperature of 50+ gallons at 125 degrees all day, even when you are not using it. Depending on your location, the energy required to heat water could be very minimal. If you are in a warm climate, such as Arizona, you will require very little energy. Even in the winter months, you would only have to heat water 30-45 degrees; in the summer, on 20-30. The energy savings would be most dramatic in warmer climates, where water has to be heated to a lesser extent.
I am not going to get into all the particulars of this; you can read all about them on retailers sites; what I do want to get across is that they are not particularly expensive to buy, and they are very efficient, and very worthy of our attention, especially in a desert state like Arizona. There are numerous good manufactures of these tanks, Rinnai, Eemax, Paloma, Stiebel Eltron, Bosch, to name a few. Again, these things are all over Europe, so it is not untested technology. There is a great amount of data available on the net about them, and I encourage you to look into them. One of the authorities on these is Low Energy Systems, a leading distributor of the Paloma and other tankless water heaters. .
There are tradeoffs, or we would all be using them already. One, obviously is cost, and a likely lack of familiarity by plumbers. As I mentioned, the cost can be slightly higher than a tank heater, but those costs are certainly offset by monthly bills over time. There is also the tax credit, which further offsets the higher cost. The next time you get a chance to talk to a environmental activist or oily-haired celebrity, I would certainly want you ask them if they have considered saving water and energy by installing a tankless water heater. I would be most curious about their answer.
August 20, 2007 at 12:38 pm
A few comments:
1. In cold climates, a tempering tank might still be desired – the water comes in from the city at 55 F and could be pre-stored in a tank so that it warms up to room temperature first.
2. Whole house (vs. for each faucet) tankless electric or gas may require an electric service panel or pipe upgrade. They can achieve these fast temperature increases because there’s a lot of energy going into them all at once. Add on top of that regular loads (like AC or your furnace)…
3. Whole house tankless heaters can get bogged down when using more than one source at the same time (shower and wash). It depends on the brand and model – ask the question.
4. If you use a whole house natural gas unit, there has to be the ability to get fresh air into the house that the unit is using (and exhausting outside) – the same as for your furnace and current water heater, but now the balance that may have previously existed, doesn’t any more and you’re at risk for carbon monoxide back-draft.
5. Nothing is as simple as it seems. If you have natural gas, that’s generally cleaner and cheaper than electricity (which is often coal), unless you’re in a high hydro area. I tend to want to migrate toward natural gas when possible (it’s still cheaper and cleaner than electricity, unless you get an off-peak rate of some kind).
6. I only use 10-15 therms of natural gas for cooking and hot water. Even if my stand-by losses were 25%, that’s 2-3 therms, or about $2-4/month, or up to $50/yr. We have two in our house, so adjust accordingly. The incremental cost of a tankless vs. tank could be $1000 when all it said and done (since they aren’t getting the volumes needed to reduce prices yet).
7. If the tankless has an electronic ignition and/or controls and your power goes out, you don’t have any hot water. Most tank systems have a pilot light.
August 20, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Thank you for your comments, Solarkismet. You are way more informed than I am, and I appreciate that you brought some techinical knowlege to my topic. There are tradeoffs to everything, and they need to be looked at, so your insights about actual energy used are very useful. As you said, nothing is as simple as it seems, but I do see some upsides with this technology.
I would love to see someone with some knowledge of ground source heating write an article that details it. I will likely start a post, but I hope someone far more knowledgeable than I will flesh it out. Energy and water are both such incredibly important topics that get overlooked as secondary issues, when they should be at the top of the discussion list in politics.