There’s a relatively new alternative to the standard water heater tank that you probably have in your utility room. Rather than keeping gallons of water hot and at the ready at all times, these tankless, or “on-demand,” units kick on only when you open the hot-water tap. Then they heat the water instantaneously as it flows, providing you with an endless supply and saving you $100 or more a year in energy costs.




How a tankless unit works
An on-demand system makes hot water only when you need it, explains Millbrook, N.Y., architect Chris Colby, who designs energy efficient houses. When you turn on the shower, for example, water begins flowing through capillary-like pipes in the heater that are surrounded by a powerful gas burner—or electric coils in the case of electrical systems—where it’s heated on the spot. (There are no oil-fired on-demand water heaters on the market.)


As a result, a tankless water heater never runs out of hot water. With a traditional tank, once you use up the ready supply inside, you have to wait for the heater to make more, a process that takes at least 20 minutes, depending on your model. Because an on-demand system heats water as you use it, as long as it has water and fuel, you’ll have hot water.


More importantly, since on-demand units fire only when needed, they’re very efficient. For a typical house, on-demand hot water slashes hot water energy bills by a quarter to a third.


Limits on simultaneous uses
Though on-demand units can keep pumping out hot water all day, they can’t produce a big quantity all at once. With a traditional tank heater, you can shower, run the dishwasher, and do a load of laundry all at the same time. But an on-demand heater can’t handle that much volume and would therefore provide only a trickle to each simultaneous user.


The typical on-demand unit puts out 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm). Top-of-the-line models can put out 5 gpm, enough to handle two uses at the same time, but not the 7.1 gpm required to run the shower, dishwasher, and clothes washer all at once.


When you’re comparing flow rates, pay attention to the rise in temperature being quoted. Energy Star measures gpm based a 77-degree increase in water temperature for the incoming supply, but some companies list their gpm flows at 35- and 45-degree rises. The more heating the water requires to reach the desired temperature, the slower the flow rate.


Installing multiple units
One solution to the limited output problem is to install multiple on-demand units. Because they’re small—about the size of a carry-on suitcase—they can be placed just about anywhere your water line runs: attic, basement, closet, or crawlspace. So you can have two or three units serving different parts of the house, and plenty of hot water.


Having multiple on-demand units won’t reduce your overall household energy efficiency. In fact, it does just the opposite. By bringing the hot water close to where it’s needed, you reduce the energy loss of piping heated water through the cold basement and walls and increase efficiency a full 50% over a standard hot water tank system, about $165 in annual savings for an average household.


High upfront costs
The downside to installing multiple on-demand water heaters is that even one of these systems is quite costly. A gas-fired unit will run you $1,500 to buy and install, nearly double the price of a standard gas water heater, and $575 more than a high-efficiency tank model. And the costs can go up from there: While tank water heaters typically use a half-inch gas line, on-demand units need three-quarter-inch pipe. Making that change costs from $25 to $40 a foot, so if you’re putting one or more units near the kitchen or upstairs bathrooms, you can add many hundreds to the initial costs.


On the bright side, if your unit has an Energy Factor of .82 or higher, as many do, you can get a 30% federal tax credit up to $1,500 on purchase and installation costs incurred in 2010. Electric on-demand units cost less, as little as $400 installed. But they don’t qualify for tax credits because they’re less efficient than gas and are better suited for point-of-use applications, such as instant kitchen hot water, rather than a whole-house system, according to Potomac, Md., contractor Jay Irwin.


The bottom line is that unless you’re going to invest big bucks in a several on-demand water heaters, these systems work best for small households without a lot of simultaneous hot water needs. For a large family living in a big house, a high-efficiency traditional tank unit still may be a better option.

Joe Bousquin HoseLogic.com June 8, 2010

JUST FOR FUN: The News Is Broken

DUH! Dumbed down and not news at all. CNN are you listening???

RECYCLING: Homes for Sale, a Piece at a Time

Recycling is expanding from newspapers and bottles to entire houses as foreclosures, tax credits, and landfill costs prompt businesses and non-profit organizations to salvage materials from old homes.


Stores are springing up to sell used lumber, appliances, cabinetry, and flooring. Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit that builds and rehabs homes, has 550 such outlets, called “ReStores.” Habitat’s Mark Andrews says the number is growing “almost daily.” He expects 100 more stores in the next year.


“It’s exploded all over the country” in five to seven years, consultant David Johnston says about the trend to deconstruct rather than demolish homes.


Owners get a tax credit for donating goods and peace of mind for not dumping into landfills, says Johnston, founder of What’s Working, a Colorado-based firm that consults on sustainable building.


People who do the work say there are no national figures but business is booming:


The ReUse People, a non-profit in Oakland, deconstructs more than 200 homes each year in several states, up from about 100 in 2005, and has more than quadrupled its warehouse capacity in five years, its president, Ted Reiff, says.
Dave Bennick, who runs RE-USE Consulting in Bellingham, Wash., has clients in 38 states and says he has taught deconstruction to 10% more groups each year since 2007, many aiming to put jobless people back to work. He says most of his recent workload deals with abandoned foreclosures, primarily in Rust Belt cities hit hard by the recession.
Non-profit Second Chance in Baltimore deconstructs 75 houses annually plus parts of 200 to 300 other buildings, up from five homes in 2003, founder Mark Foster says. He says his warehouse space is 150,000 square feet, up from 15,000 square feet.
“People are looking for products that are gently used but one-third the price,” Foster says, explaining why his annual sales have increased from less than $500,000 in 2003 to more than $2 million.

HOME MAINTANENCE: 5 Ways You Can Save Energy and Money

You probably already know that replacing those old, leaky windows in your charming fixer-upper would save bundles on your heating and cooling bills.


But new windows don’t come cheap—hardly anything does these days, right?


You don’t have to break the bank to save big on your energy bill, though, energy experts say.


Just ask Jennifer Mays of Kansas City, Mo. She earned valuable energy credits on her electrical and gas bills by doing a few simple tasks, such as adding more insulation to her midtown home’s attic and spraying expandable foam insulation in the gaps where her home meets its foundation.


Mays’ home underwent an energy audit—where a certified expert lists simple ways to eliminate inefficiencies. After completing the suggested fixes, Mays submitted her receipts to her utilities, Kansas City Power & Light and Missouri Gas Energy, and reaped $1,200 in credits.


“We’re still living on credits,” Mays says. “We haven’t had an electric or gas bill since the end of the year.”


Here are few more inexpensive ways to use less electricity in your home. Some don’t cost any more than time.


Install a programmable thermostat. This is an easy way to shave dollars off your bill, says Kim Winslow, manager of energy efficiency at Kansas City Power & Light.


Programmable thermostats keep you from changing your cooling and heating settings on a whim, she says. You program temperatures for when you’re home and away, awake and asleep. In the warm months, general guidelines call for a setting of 78 degrees or higher.

As shore washes away, buyer plucks Plum Island house

PLUM ISLAND — Before a series of severe storms this spring stole the ground beneath it, the house on Annapolis Way in Newbury proudly overlooked the Atlantic.


Now, it hangs precariously on the brink of a steep sand dune driven back by the unrelenting tides. Its back door, which once opened to a large deck and a staircase to the beach, now leads nowhere, save a sheer 15-foot drop to the sand below.


“Right on the edge,’’ said Michael Webber, a Newburyport real estate agent who is handling the sale of the oceanfront property. “Nowhere to go but back.’’


Despite the home’s fragile foundation, and the accelerating erosion plaguing the 11-mile island, a prospective buyer has emerged with plans to move the home — or build a new one — farther from the bluff.


The news has stirred strong emotions on this wave-whipped barrier beach, where many are confronting the hard fact that oceanfront homes, like the fragile dunes they rest on, might have begun a permanent retreat.


“It’s a barrier beach, and it keeps moving back,’’ said Mary Reilly, a city environmental official in neighboring Newburyport. “Storms are getting stronger, sea levels are rising. It’s a terrible thing, but it’s the reality.’’


In the aftermath of the intense March storms, town inspectors deemed the home dangerous and or dered its residents to leave the premises. The owners, John and Edith Drinkwater, had previously put the home on the market for close to $800,000, a typical price for local oceanfront property. But when powerful waves eroded several feet of the dune and wiped away the deck, they drastically lowered the price to a little less than $300,000.


The day the reduced price was listed, a buyer pounced. The property might be under siege, but it still overlooks the ocean.