Steve, no feces involvement here but I've been looking into water heaters quite a bit for a project.
For the hard water, instead or in addition to the water softener you may want to look into putting one of these into your hot water path. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000NKETXQ/ I wouldn't put it in the general cold water path - while polyphosphates are safe for consumption from what I can see, and I'd trust 3M to vet them well, I try to not add much to drinking water, and cold water is usually mostly what is used for drinking. Maybe check your plumbing if it's possible to add that device to the cold water path for everywhere except the kitchen sink, where drinking water is usually taken. The $80 USD price is almost "too good to be true" compared to a water softener but the reviews suggest that it works well without downsides. The cartridges are $50 each and supposedly last 6 months. If the chimney leaks it could be a simple fix to the rain cap or flashing, did you inspect it? WISP experience is at least useful for judging if it's sealed well to the roof or if the structure of the rain cap is good in strong wind. I would recommend doing lots of math before assuming a solar system can run an electric water heater for a busy family - it takes a ton of electricity to create heat, which is why tank electric heaters take 2x-3x as much time to recover from a cold tank as gas heaters. I don't think you'd want family members to wait 1-2 hours for a hot shower after someone else used all the water. As a reference, the bigger tankless heaters use a reasonable amount of gas (~150-200K BTU) but they take an inordinate, almost frightening, amount of electricity, ~36kW. Tankless math starts with available GPM (from temperature rise chart). IIRC you're in Illinois, where groundwater temp averages 47 deg F (8 deg C in the developed countries). Assuming that you want 120 deg water output from the tankless heater, that's 73 deg F temp rise. That's on the higher end for a tankless heater. If we look at the Eccotemp 45HI-NG natural gas tankless water heater, their biggest model at ~140K BTU, the chart says that at that temp rise it can do 2GPM, so one low-flow shower. If you want to run a high-flow shower and a sink, or 2 showers at the same time, you'd need to buy 2 units and the serial cable between them that allows them to run intelligently in parallel (reducing the "not activating at low water flow" problem by having just one of them, not both, operate in low flow conditions). On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 12:35 AM Steve Jones <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> wrote: > You guys all do different weird shit. Went to drain my gas heater tonite > (may have put that maintenance off longer than intended) > We are quarry country so we have super hard water. Needless to say tanks > full of baked in sediment and when I cleared the valve I may have cracked > the liner, about every ten seconds I'm getting a drip on the burner, and my > pop off is dripping, probably some sediment. > > The water heater is the only thing I have that vents hot anymore and my > chimney leaks in driving rain. Is rather just bash it in and put a > dumbwaiter in the chase. I have the two fresh kids that I bet would have a > blast riding that. > > Power vent gas looks to almost double the cost. > > Tankless is looking almost comparable in price for gas, so I'm curious if > any of you guys run them without major water softener and filters. > > I'm planning on solar in the next 5 or 6 years when I redo my roof so > electric would be the thing I go with on the water heater after the one I'm > gonna have to put in now. > > I like gas water heaters because I know how to fix them, parts are cheap, > same with my clothes dryers. But theyve priced themselves into me looking > at my options. > > Tankless I dont know how to calculate gpm needs. But what led to this was > taking the flow reducer out of my low flow shower head and running out of > hot water in 20 minutes. I start my day by scalding myself for about a half > hour cause I'm a filthy bastard and need to be cleansed of my sins. > We have 2 bathrooms and a girl hitting her teens, so I assume we may be > getting into a shower and bath coming on at the same time and the wife > knowing what's good for her and washing dishes. > She wont let me put a wood stove and still in the bathroom, so wood fired > shower options are out. > Are residential boilers a thing? All my walls had pocket doors so I have > plenty of room for radiant walls, I dont know if boiler heat it even > efficient though. > > > > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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