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Tankless Hot Water Heaters, Efficient, Effective, Endless.
Posts tagged heating water
Lime Scale…. The Energy Thief
Nov 24th
From the smallest homes and business to the very largest, everyone 
invests a substantial amount of money into heating water. The problem is lime scale buildup on the surface of water heaters, which significantly reduces heat transfer. This lime scale reduces heat transfer, decreases fuel efficiency, and will ultimately lead to equipment failure.
Water naturally contains dissolved minerals such as calcium carbonate, lime, silica, iron, and phosphate to name a few. These trace elements are essential to human health, not so much for your water heater though. With heat the minerals are able to precipitate out and build up on the surfaces.
On day one of a tank type water heater you looking at your greatest efficiency, sometimes as high as 80%. This is reduced quickly as the lime and other particles cling together and bake themselves into a hard crust. This scale builds up on the walls and blocks the heat transfer proportionally as much. With the additional heat not being transferred into the water the steel becomes brittle and can crack quite easily. 
Solutions For Lime Scaling
For a tankless water heater it is essential that you have the system flushed once a year with a de scaling solution (vinegar). This maintains the tankless heat exchanger and ensure a consistent efficiency rate. As for your conventional tank water heater, flushing is more difficult but can be done. For the most part they are designed as disposable units that are simply just replaced if broken.
Rental or Leasing Tankless
Nov 8th
Tankless Technology
Tankless water heaters use the latest in electronics and gas burning technology to provide an endless supply of hot water. Heating water only when it’s needed provides energy savings not found with conventional storage tanks water heaters.
How Expensive?
This new technology is more expensive than conventional tanks and can prohibitive for home owners to purchase. You should know that there are options available to ease this transition. Renting or leasing a tankless can help you overcome the cost barrier and there is still the option to purchase the unit at the end of 10 years (the length of most contracts).
Rental Tankless
You are still eligible for rebates and Government incentives when renting a tankless and if anything goes wrong the unit its completely covered while renting. A rental tankless price will fluctuate from home to home as venting and piping requirements are always different…. So just fill out the quick form below and find out for free how much you can save.
Instant or Tankless Water Heaters?
Apr 29th
Things to Know.
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Most of us have grown up with a standard tank type water heater. As such we are used to the way our hot water system works. Switching to a tankless water heater will have an affect on the way your hot water system works.
With a tank type heater, when you turn on a hot water faucet, the hot water, typically 140 degrees, immediately begins flowing through the pipe to get to your faucet. As the water travels through the cold pi pe, it cools off until the piping material warms up. That is why your hot water doesn’t instantly go from cold to hot; it has to warm up the pipes first.
Some homes have hot water circulating systems that circulate the hot water through the pipes to obtain instant hot water at every sink. Circulating systems can save a lot of water. They are wasteful of energy though, since the water heater will fire up more often to replace the heat being lost through the piping which acts like a big radiator even if the pipes are well insulated.
There are also pumping systems that pump the hot water to the fixture from the heater only when you want to use hot water and you don’t run any water down the drain. You still save the water and time, but you don’t waste water.
Tankless Systems
Tankless water heaters are being promoted as providing endless hot water and as being energy saving over traditional water heaters. While both of these facts are true, there are other things to consider.
If you are considering replacing your tank type water heater with a tankless unit, and you have a typical house, make sure you get one large enough to do the job. Since you are heating water as you use it, you must heat it much more quickly than a tank type heater so you need to add heat much more quickly.
For a gas type heater this means you will be using a lot more gas volume/ minute than with a tank type heater. Your exhaust flue may need to be larger and the gas line might need to be upgraded. For electric units you might have to have special wiring put in to handle the high amperage loads created by an electric tankless water heater.
Tankless water heaters are typically much smaller than conventional tanks and are hung on the wall, resulting in a significant space savings.
Tankless water heaters can save you a modest amount of energy, typically around $20.00 – $40.00 a month. They are also eligible for home energy Grants and Rebates provided by the Government to aid in a speedy transition from the old energy consuming conventional tank to this new efficient technology.
GE Hybrid Electric Water Heater
May 11th
GE Hybrid Electric Water Heater
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Heating water for showers, laundry, dishwashers and other household needs can account for up to 25 percent of a home’s total energy cost. General Electric hopes that they figured out a way to persuade
homeowners to upgrade from a conventional electric storage-tank water heater to its new heat-pump water heater, expected out in the fourth quarter of 2009. A heat-pump water heater is quite common in Japan, but GE’s 50-gallon Hybrid Electric Water Heater represents the only U.S. version from a major manufacturer. This is an electric conventional style tank that holds between 40 and 60 gallons.
This heat-pump technology being used works be allowing heat to transfer from the air to the water stored in the insulated tank. (The conventional style tank will also retain some traditional electrical heating elements, which will kick in when needed.) GE claims this new water heater will use 2,300 kilowatt hours annually, about half that of a standard electric water heater. Those savings could help defray its cost, which at $1,200 to $1,500 American is higher than purchasing a conventional tank.
Realistically if you have gas or propane service at your home it would be much more efficient and cost effective to go with the new tankless water heaters that are available. Additionally since the unit is absorbing heat from the surrounding air it has to give off cool air which in Toronto and surrounding area means that your furnace will have to then work to heat that new cool air.
This may be an interesting product for any cottages or homes with electrical service only.
Solar Water Heater and Tankless Update
Apr 21st
Solar Water Heater and Tankless
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One of our readers is working on installing a domestic solar hot water heater in conjunction with a tankless. They were going to go with a Rheem tankless to offset any additinonal temperature increase that was needed over the solar gains. Unfortunately they found out that the particular unit that they were planning on using senses the incoming water temperature, buy ‘ignores’ water that is within 40F of the target temp (ie. the unit won’t cut on to work). This has caused them some problems because:
1) The max output on any residential line is 120F (49C) (this is canadian law it cant be any hotter than this in a residential home).
2) If the solar heated water comes in at 100F (37C) or warmer, the unit will not kick on. This means the output is 37C, a cold shower to be sure.
3) If you go to the commerical unit, the max temp is 180F. This much too hot for residential use (think of someone turning on the hot water at the sink to do dishes), but it would work from the 40F differential standpoint (ie. if the water is 60C or colder, then the unit will fire, anything warmer than 60C doesn’t matter as it would be warm enough for a shower). Again this is illegal in Canada as the Max allowed Temperature is 120F.
The best solution is to more to a Rinnai Tankless water heater as this unit only requires there to be a 20 degree farenheight differentiation between water to be heated and heated water. Therfor your shower will at the very least be 100 degrees farenheight which is plenty warm enough.
These co-heating water heating systems are quite complicated so its important that you talk to a prefessional regarding any plans that you have for your home or cottage. Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions.
Environmental Water Heater
Mar 19th
Environmental Tankless
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- If you decide to Go tankless you can expect savings of up to 30-50% on your water heating costs.
– For every dollar of gas spent on heating water with a tank, 30 to 50 cents goes straight out the chimney. Tankless units are so efficient they ultimately pay for themselves through the energy savings they generate each month.
- Because water is heated on demand with a tankless water heater, you will never run out of hot water and the water temperature will always remains constant. You can take a shower, run the dish washer and use a tap at the same time with no interruption of water pressure or temperature. One of the best improvements is that family members can take showers one after another and you will never run out of hot water.
- Tankless systems last twice as long as typical conventional take type storage systems – about 20 years. And, unlike typical water storage tanks, tankless water heaters never rust, accumulate sediment, leak or flood your basement. Additionally, they are much safer because there is no active pilot light.
- Tankless water heaters reduce nitrous oxide (major smog producing gas) emissions by up to 80%. When you switch to a tankless water heater, you eliminate up to 1,000 pounds of polluting carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere every year!
Heating Water with a Tankless in Ontario
Feb 10th
Buying a Tankless in Ontario |
So you’re thinking of getting a tankless water heater and you live in Ontario, that’s good these systems are excellent for the environment and your bottom line. Most…. Actually all of these systems are designed outside our country and thus outside our climate. You should take some extra precautions before purchasing a system.
If you take a look at the map you can extrapolate a rough estimate of ground water temperatures for Ontario. Sorry there doesn’t seem to be an accurate map of Ontario’s ground water values anywhere. I would use 35-37 Fahrenheit as a good starting point; your incoming water will never be much colder than that. The tankless water heater you choose will need to warm the water up from your starting temperature to your desired level. If the incoming water is 35 and you want hot water to be 110 your tankless needs to heat the water 75 degrees. This is quite a relatively significant increase and to produce this level of rise requires the water to pass through the heat exchangers at a slower rate.
In the summer Ontario ground water is often between 50 and 65 Fahrenheit, to reach your desired 110 degree level the water only needs to be heated 45 degrees. Sensors in the tankless measure incoming and outgoing temperature levels and adjust flow rates accordingly. Thus a system rated to provide 5 GPM (gallons per minute) with only a 40 degree temperature rise will likely only produce maybe 2 GPM in the winter when water temperatures are really low.
When you’re purchasing a new tankless for your home make sure you pay close attention to the tankless heaters specifications. Make sure that it is able to provide an adequate flow rate when your incoming water temperatures are at the lowest in the winter.
Tankless Water Heater Facts
Jan 12th
Tankless Facts
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- 25% of every household energy dollar is spent making domestic hot water. Heating water with a conventional tank is the third largest energy consumer in your home (behind furnace and A/C).
- Electricity is the WORST way to heat hot water while natural gas and propane gas are much more efficient. Based on national fuel price averages of $1.46/ccf and $0.09/kwh, the cost/100,000 BTU’s is $1.46 for natural gas and $2.64 for electricity. Just under 60% of North American households have access to natural gas, and if you don’t, propane gas is available to almost everyone and is still a better value than electricity. In addition electric water heaters have only a small fraction of the capacity of gas water heaters. So if you like expensive, short showers, with cold water at the end, use electric; otherwise gas would be a better choice.
- Modern gas fired tankless water heaters are the best alternative available to today’s homeowners to reduce their residential energy consumption. A typical gas fired tankless water heater cost about 2-1/2 times as much as a standard tank water heater. However it will pay for itself in just a few years or less, and will last twice as long as a tank.
- If you are considering a tankless water heater Rinnai is likely the best choice. On average a new Rinnai is installed somewhere in North America every 3.75 minutes. Rinnai has shipped over 30 million tankless water heaters world wide.
Tankless Opperational Differences
Dec 2nd
Tankless vs. Tanks: What Are The Differences?
Tanks and Tankless units have operational differences you need to be aware of.
Typically, you can expect to use approximately 70% of a tank’s volume; i.e., a 50-gallon tank should provide approximately 35 gallons of hot water. The burner initiates to reheat the tank, but the latter can only recover at approximately 1 GPM. Thus, the recovery wait begins. This stored volume, in combination with the standing pilot light, usually results in an Energy Factor (EF) in the low range of 0.53 ~ 0.62 for gas fired, tank-type water heaters. “Energy factor is what the end user pays for. A water heater with an energy factor of 0.62 means that for every dollar spent heating water, $0.62 is being used to heat the water. The remaining $0.38 is wasted.”
Whatever the maximum flow rate for any Tankless unit that flow is continuous for as long as there is demand. And unlike a tank-type heater, the temperature remains constant at the selected set point. There is no stored water and no pilot light, so Tankless systems have a high EF range between 0.81 and 0.94, depending on the model and gas type.
