I'm hot blooded

[quantumduck]

Hot water is one of the great innovations of modern living. I personally enjoy it on a regular basis. Most homes create this hot water with a big boiler - usually one which runs on gas. Yesterday our water started getting less hot. Being a long time veteran of gas water heaters I figured we had a situation where the pilot light had blown out. I was

Comments

[omorka]

Holy crap! 8-(

At that point, I can no longer blame this on venial motives like cheapness and disregard for the future or for other people's property. That's gross stupidity and incompetence of the worst sort. (I'm not really impressed with the inspector either, to be honest.)

Here's hoping you can find an honest, competent, and relatively cheap plumber to fix it.

[quantumduck]

I think we have found a good plumber. His (admittedly dramatically huge) bid work includes a couple of visits from the city to inspect the work, and permits to do the work in the first place. These are the sorts of things that are supposed to happen with gas and power, but since they cost time and money they often get skipped by 'creative' contractors.

I agree that the inspector bears some blame, but at least he was honest with us that he felt like so many things were unusual that he was going to have his hands full trying to catch everything. We tried to concentrate on fixing things that were obviously out of code and/or dangerous. I hadn't heard the whole inspection story from Rory until today. I don't know if would have bought the house if I'd been there when jason casually admitted the boiler had no bleed valve. I've seen what an exploding boiler can do on Mythbusters.

[doctorcaligari]

Holy shit.

Best of luck with it. House shit bites. There is no such thing as painless or reasonably-priced house shit, and yet you seem to have stumbled upon an even suckier variant than usual. Congratulations, I think.

If you need steam release, you might wanna Netflick "The Money Pit"...

Anyway. Good luck. Don't blow up.

[quantumduck]

I think of that movie often these days ... mostly because it's yet another 80's film where the female love interest plays the cello. ;-)

[shefsatyr]

Not enough gas pressure to get a tankless? I'm confused by this. Are you saying you don't have as much natural gas input as any other standard house

[quantumduck]

I hear you on going tankless. I'd prefer their 80% efficiency to the %35 a traditional tank heater manages.

Because of our peak water demand, and the fact that we have a three story house, we'd need a tankless with at least 7.5gpm capacity. That's some serious hardware. They make one, of course, but it's expensive. It would also require a slightly higher volume gas main than we have on that side of the house. Running an additional gas lead across the house seems silly.

Instead our plumber has suggested a power jet 50gallon tank heater with a water recycler. That would give us %65 efficiency and allow us to use some of our current connections. With the powered fan jets in this thing we can run a horizontal vent out to the side wall, much as you can with many tankless units.

[shefsatyr]

Another alternative is I know they make small tankless heaters that work for a specific device, such as one connected directly to a shower. It's been suggested that using a main tankless set on low to "prime" the water and a little unit on an shower or sink to finish the job works really well. Of course you have to buy multiple units and all that installation whee.. But the mini tankless don't need exhaust holes and I think they work on 120 so no need to rewire the breaker box.

Sadly it may just be easier to go with your 50 gallon tank.

[quantumduck]

Yeah, I thought about installing two tankless systems in series, and then adding the small single use units throughout the house. It would cost quite a bit more up front, and we have far too many different bathrooms. That may be what we do in five or so years.