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Hi everyone, remember me? ;-) Sorry for the prolonged absense, it's been a madhouse here this summer. You might remember I broke my elbow earlier this summer. Then I've been busy with a very small part-time cake decorating business (I've 'only' made about 5 cakes but when taking care of 4 kids on top of that, it's a LOT! LOL!). Then we had a minor flood in our basement and we had to empty it completly, rip out the old carpet etc etc etc. And the girls have certainly kept me busy with potty training. They've pretty much got the hang of it now (after working at it most of the summer!) but man was that an adventure. Way harder than with my first two!
Then I seemed to be having a problem logging in here (seems to be fixed just by accessing the site by typing the addy directly instead of from my old favorites link, weird) which was quite frustrating.
Anywayyyyyyyy, slowly catching up with all of you and I noticed on one topic that a couple of you have tankless water heaters. We're building a house next year and I've been considering getting one since they're obviously more energy efficient. Do you like yours? Any cons I should know about or consider before buying? Would you say that you're saving enough energy to get a decent payback time on the extra cost? Basically the only time we use hot water is for the dishwasher and for baths/showers. With the girls potty trained I only have nighttime diapers to deal with and I wash everything else in cold, so no real laundry considerations.
Karen.
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Glad to have you back, Karen!
I've been having problems with my login, so I'll have to try your method next time. I've been getting an error, but then if I hit "back" until I'm back at the forum, I'm logged in. A little annoying, but it's been working.
Anyway, we didn't put in the tankless system, so I'm not sure about the cost difference and savings over previous energy usage either since I don't have anything to compare (can't even compare previous house because that was in the UK and had a boiler!).
The only real drawback I see is that it does take more water to get the water to hot, so it's not quite as easy to run the water to hot for quick things (well, it's easy, but you watch all that water going down the drain just so you can wash your face for three seconds), so we've adapted in some ways. We don't try to turn the hot tap for hand washing (in most cases), since we figure we're probably not going to wait around for it to get hot anyway (how many people really do?), so why trigger the heater. I also collect the water from running the shower to hot, as well as at the kitchen sink. DS#1 thinks it's fascinating to watch me flush the toilet with a jug of water! (I have a pretty painted metal jug that I fill in the kitchen and just move to the downstairs bathoom; it's attractive and ready to go!)
In some ways it's good because it's made me think more about whether I truly need hot water or not, and also made me think more about collecting the water for other use.
Related to housing decisions, we've just replaced the old toilets here with ultra-low-flow. Sometimes low-flow can be less than effective, but I would *highly* recommend the Toto Eco-Drake (think that's what it's called). It uses 1.28 gal/flush, and I have to say that it does a fantastic job getting stuff down. It inspires much more confidence than the older lot-of-water toilets that we've replaced.
When we built a house six years ago, our plumber flat-out refused to put in anything other than a Toto (1.6 gal/6 liter was the best available at the time). Those were great, so we looked into them right away this time, were pleased to find even lower-flows available. Online reviews were good, so DH called one of the local hardware stores that stock it and they said they use it in their staff bathroom and it has gotten rave reviews. DH went right out and bought three toilets! :-) |
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Yeah, it's strange. I can login ok but then when I come to post something I can't because the field area has an error message. Same thing today, wonder if I need to change my link or something? Very odd.
Another question for you. Is your water heater gas or electric? I've heard of supply issues with electric (ie supplying both a dishwasher and shower at the same time), do you know if that's true? \
Karen.
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Ours is gas. Also, I don't know if this is the way most are set up or not, but we have two cylinders down by the heater, and they are basically holding tanks for the water before it is heated, so that the water is passively brought up to room temperature, thus being heated from 70F (or whatever the basement is) instead of from whatever the cold water supply is (45, 50F?).
So, with building a house, are you looking into geothermal heating/cooling at all? How about solar water heating or electric?
Just wondering--those things weren't even on our radar screen when we built back when. We insulated the daylights out of everything to the point our builder thought we were nuts, but that was about it. Of course, it'd be great to do everything if money were unlimited, eh?
We're looking into solar (electric) on our house here in CO--what a great climate for it! Unfortunately, the old cedar-shake roof has to get replaced first, and I think that's going to take all the pennies for this year (or longer, ugh). In the meantime hubby has a set of 2x3 panels he props outside and runs into our electic mower. He's pretty jazzed he's been running that thing for a month completely off-grid. We'll keep dreaming . . . |
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We're looking into some things here and there. Or actually *I* am looking into them and having fights with dh about it! LOL! It's always about the money with him and he's very very skeptical about something even remotely non-traditional. I am hoping to at least get our floors done with certified wood (from sustainably managed forests), would be nice to get the whole house that way but it will probably be too expensive.
We're hopefully getting a masonry heater (aka russian heater or masonry fireplace). They're a very different kind of fireplace that you place in the center of the house and will super-efficiently (and comfortably, it's radiant heating so way more comfortable than forced air or electric) heat the entire house. It's wayyyyyy more efficient than even the most efficient wood stove (uses less wood and creates almost no smoke at all, so little smoke actually that you literally never need to get the chimney cleaned). They're a stunning 'green' addition to the home but naturally they're not cheap so hubby is very resistant.
I'd love to look into solar but dh is deadset against it, claims he's sure that it's not viable yet. Still too expensive to be worthwhile right now. I'm not pushing for it right now cause it is very expensive, maybe later on if we can afford it I'll bring it up again (and hopefully by then the price will have gone down). For geothermal he again says we don't have a good climate for it, too cold in winter mostly. He says that if you use it for cooling it *might* payback eventually but he's concerned about the chemicals they use leaching into the ground, says he's certain that it's inevitable and would pretty much 'ruin' any environmental good we'd have done...
Even the tankless I'll have to see. If you need a gas one to be efficient enough then that would be a lot more trouble I think, having to get a gas tank and everything, just for the hot water heater (no gas lines where we're moving) And there's other alternatives I'm considering such as 'recycling' the heat in used water from our showers and dishwasher. We spoke to someone who's got a plastic piping system to partially heat the water in his tank with 'dirty' water by running it through another tank first that has the dirty water running through it in pipes (so no contact with the water itself). That and we can also look into circling the water through the masonry fireplace to use some of that energy...
Tough going for a tree-hugger like me to have a cheap, urm, I mean frugal *and* skeptical husband!! ;-)
Karen.
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My DH tends to be skeptical/cynical about things other than energy production and conservation (esp. claims that things are more "natural"). Even when we built he was wanting to do a windmill, but it was just too much money for us. Solar is better here than wind, but even with a huge rebate from the power company, it's something like $14K, and that wouldn't even generate all of our estimated usage. We're both pretty committed to trying to make this work, but I draw the line at borrowing over our already ginormous mortgage to finance the project. Maybe it will be a little easier in a few years when the boys are in school if I can find a part-time job to finance the environmental goals (but the rebate will have expired by then, so who knows!)!
DH argues that every new science needs early adopters who pay very high prices, but once they reach a critical mass, manufacturing and technology catch up and the prices come down, like with computers. So philosophically, anyway, he's ready to put his money where his mouth is, but it's finding the money that's the problem, of course! Need to PT #2 and sell the diapers to start the slush fund . . . :-)
Have to add that DS#1 had his first day of preschool and apparently informed the teachers that they needed to replace their incandescent bulbs with florescent bulbs. Proud and cringing at the same time! LOL! |
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Hi Karen,
just a quick reply to what your dh said about solar. My dad put solar panels on our house in the 80's to heat our hot water and they haven't paid for hot water since (except for prolonged cloud periods). So as far as solar being viable, here's a 20+ year old example for him!!!
KarenC wrote:
"I'd love to look into solar but dh is deadset against it, claims he's sure that it's not viable yet."
Tara, home-birthin' mama to Avery 19/12/06 |
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Yeah, but how much did it cost them and how much have they saved? He believes in them in terms that they work well enough (although I don't think he believes we could ever supply our entire house that way) but it's the cost vs. financial benefit that concerns him. For now he's convinced that it would cost us way more than we'd even be able to recuperate in the lifetime of the system. I'm sorry to say that the environmental and independance benefits just don't mean as much to him.
There's tons I'd LOVE to do but I have to pick my battles with dh. For now I'm concentrating on stuff that can't be retrofit later on (like getting certified wood for the floors and possible the house itself). Solar panels can easily be added later on so I'm going to sit on it, for now...
Karen.
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Wise woman. Totally agreed about focussing on things that can't be added later, like the building materials, and things that are much easier to implement before all the finishing takes places. I'm sure the cost-benefits of things like good windows and tons of insulation would convince him enough on things like that, too. Even where you site and orient the house can make a difference with things like heating and cooling costs.
The stove thing sounds pretty cool. But how does it not get smoky?
I was also thinking about water recycling for heat, which made me think about water recycling in general. I haven't really looked into this, but there has got to be a way (though I suppose it's probably prohibitively expensive) to have your not-so-nasty (is it called grey?) water reused for something like flushing the toilets and watering the yard. That would basically be everything but the toilet and maybe one designated sink. I guess that would get pretty complicated with different piping and probably needing a cistern . . . but it would be kinda neat, huh? |
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Oh yeah, good windows and insulation is easy with him, that's more 'traditional' and very cost effective. It's the more 'out-there' stuff that's a tough sell...
The stove thing really is pretty cool. Basically it doesn't get smoky because it gets sooo hot that it burns wood way more efficiently. It gets so hot that it actually burns the escaped gases and all the creosote etc in those gases. You need to achieve very high temps to do that and wood stoves don't get anywhere near (would be dangerous if they did anyway as they're not designed for that). These things get up to 1500F but yet are safer than wood stoves and fireplaces. It's a very quick and hot burn (compared to wood stoves that burn very slowly) which is what creates the super efficiency and no smoke, then the massive masonry around it absorbs all the heat and slowly radiates it out to the room over several hours (even a very large house would likely only need 2 fires per day to keep it warm and that's in a fairly cold climate in our area - Ontario/Quebec, Canada). They've been used for centuries in eastern Europe (we have a friend that's from Romania, that's how we found out about them - he says everyone has one there). The coolest part is that it's these stunning stone structures in the middle of your house, just beautiful! And you can get bread ovens installed on the top to use the heat to cook all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, I've have to ask hubby about more intensive water recycling. I've mentioned it before and I think it's actually not that expensive. Just basically more creative piping and stuff I think... You'd need some kind of storage tank for the grey water though, since most likely you'll never need the water at the exact same time you're 'creating' it. I wonder what effect laundry soap and shampoo would have on a garden though, some might be beneficial but too much might be harmful.
It can always be done more 'manually' too. I remember seeing one family on tv that recycled a lot of their water. They had a huge bucket in the shower and reused that water for flushing the toilet and their garden (the dad had even hooked up a system for pouring the bucket the bucket out the window and into a rainbarrel or something).
Karen. |
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Hi Karen
Been missing you lately. Good luck with the cake business, sounds like fun!
Also having problems logging on and it's really cutting down on the time I spend here unfortunately, cause I can't identify a reliable way to log on.
Re water use. I've read about advanced rainwater collection systems that allow you to use rainwater for toilets, laundry, showering. I believe if someone wanted, they can even hook up a water purifier to make the water suitable for drinking. Probably really expensive, but I'd thought I'd mention it.
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I knew someone that lived in an area where they couldn't use their wellwater. Or they had no well for some reason, not sure what the exact situation was but normally they would have had to had water delivered in big trucks. This was really expensive so they set about creating a system to harvest all the rainwater they could. They changed half their roof to a metal roof (they didn't feel comfortable using water that came off a tar roof) and collected all the water in huge tanks that they had stored off the main house. They used new (unused) pesticide storage tanks (I thought that was funny and a little ironic) to store the water and then a small pump to pump it into the house. They never got around to it but they could have put in a UV light system to purify the water and make it drinkable. But in 5 years of living there she said they only had to have water delivered twice because it wasn't raining enough... I thought that was enormously cool!!
Karen.
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