I am in so much HOT WATER...

This post is dedicated to Sandi....

This...VS....

THIS!

I could not wait to move into this house....we were living with my Honey's parents...which, even though, at forty something, living with your parents is not something you wish for...living with them was easy...they are fun, sweet, easy going...and they feed you...really good food! You cannot imagine how nice it is have someone look out for you everyday, it has been a long time for me! lol They have a really nice place and they made us completely welcome...and they had everything I did not...a bathroom!  Complete with HOT WATER!  (Well...and a coffee pot...)


I got up everyday at 6a.m...traveled to my little hut...and at first I brought water with me in a 5 gallon container...lit my stove...and poured the water in a large pan to heat up and clean with...about 3 weeks after I got the house, we had the water turned on...and then turned right back off...everything was leaking...it took another week for the water company to put a new meter on the house and for us to take the pipes down (only in certain places) tighten them up and re-tape them so I could have a faucet...they were all galvanized and rusted through in some spots...the only faucet was in the basement....but I had water! and I had a source to heat it with!

Two weeks before Christmas, 2009, our house was actually clean enough...and we had the toilet plumbed in, so that we could venture into spending the night...we packed up some camping gear, my Honey had been collecting firewood, and we went and bought bacon and eggs for breakfast...I was so flippin' excited to play house in that lil hut!  MY HUT! Hee Hee

Friday night was awesome in our new house...Saturday was even better...Sunday rolled around and it was time to go home...but I felt at home in my house....I planted my feet...crossed my arms....and said...."I am not leaving"....again...my poor Honey looked at me like I had two heads...he knows my look...and he knows it is gonna be Clash of the Titans time...."But Lisa....Baby Doll...HONAAAAY..."

If we can live an entire weekend in this house and have that much fun...why couldn't we just move in and I could get twice as much done? (Well, and so could he...) I made lot's of really fast promises...and we moved in...We had a turkey fryer with an enormous kettle on it...that became a permanent fixture on the stove...I filled it every morning when I lit the stove to heat the house and cook breakfast...it was warm in an hour...enough to wash your face before work..It was boiling hot by 5 o'clock...dinner was ready and then after the days conversation...it was bath time...now the bath tub was in the bathroom but it had no faucet...it was only plumbed into the drain..I would pour that turkey kettle in there and have to add another of cold or you would be adding carrots and potatoes to make stew...we got in there together...it became a time where we actually had complete alone time and it was wonderful...lugging that turkey fryer was not! I really don't know how they did it constantly for an entire lifetime back in the "good ole days".

In June of 2010, I got to turn "29" again...Happy Birthday to me...whatcha wanna do for your birthday? I wanna research hot water heaters...so that is what we did...I finally had had enough of the turkey fryer...and it was so warm out that running that stove all day, I was dying!

Where I live, you have to drive 86 miles to the nearest Home Depot and Menards...so it was an all day trip...We first went to Home Depot...they had several hot water heaters....we were in the market for something electric because the gas was out...we had ripped it outta the house ( I will tell you my experience with that in another post) The heaters were any where from $350 to $600. Hmmm...off to Menard's...Menard's had better prices and a better selection...and they also had these little itty bitty boxes called "hot water on demand" or "tankless hot water"...It was very confusing...the information they had on them was pretty chintzy and the employees knew absolutely nothing...I opened the box and got the directions...I know that is Taboo but if someone cannot explain, where else do you get the info? Here is what I gathered from the package info:

One of the smaller units:  If your ground water is 45 degrees (which it is in the North because ground water remains (mostly) a constant temperature throughout the year as it is insulated by the ground) this small unit will heat your water at 1gpm(gallon per minute) 72 degrees... that means the water coming out of my faucet at 1gpm will be 117 degrees....HOT! basic bath water is somewhere around 99-102 degrees...

If your ground water is still 45 and you have 3gpm...which is the bottom of the standard for most houses nowadays...the unit will heat up to 45 degrees...90..which is really not all that hot...hmmmm....my water pressure runs around 5gpm...with everything going at once...washer, sinks, tub...this unit will only run one sink at a time...and it will take the tub between 14-17 minutes to fill at maximum heat...If you live in a warmer area, such as Florida or California...you will have no trouble at 3gpm getting scorching hot water from one of these babies!

Here is what I did...40 gallon electric hot water tanks are, for the bottom of the line one, $350.00...so I purchased one tankless hot water on demand unit for the bathroom and one for the kitchen....at a cost of $169.00 per unit...$338.00...

I decided to sacrifice fast tub fill for the convenience of this little tiny box and run my tub at 2gpm (you can tell where you are running by the temperature of the water) and at $169.00 I felt that my energy savings of not reheating water in a tank all day and all night if I did not use it, was worth the slow fill in my tub...the sink comes out boiling hot at maximum flow...


Here is one of the kinks...I bought my heater in the summer...when it is warm out and the ground water is at least 45 degrees...that is the average in my area even in the winter...but it is way warmer now because I can pretty much run my tub at max flow right now and get super hot water...BUT who knows what the temp of the ground water will go down to if I have a really cold winter...

Another kink:  Each unit has to have it's very own circuit breaker and it's very own large gage wire...my house is small so I only had to buy 25 feet of this wire.  The breakers are 14 bucks a piece and the wire is any where from $2.75 to $5.50 a foot!  I paid $3.00 a foot..so that was $75.00. AND my Honey wired it in...who knows what an electrician would charge...it only takes basic electrical skills to do it tho...

You can plumb these units in series and have two for the tub...or buy a larger unit...they have them at Menards but they cost anywhere from $600-$11000 dollars... they also have a twenty year warranty...

In time I will buy another small unit for the washing machine as I cannot run any other water in the house if I am doing laundry...since my house is small and I am here by myself in the daytime, I can get away with that...

In a larger home, I would go with a larger unit...I guess I would figure out what my electric bill was every month, the cost of the unit, what it would take to install it and map out how long it would take to recoup my money...for me? it was awesome...my electric bill showed an increase of 18cents!  it works very well..I only have the one bath and the one sink in the kitchen...and the laundry will have to wait, I am content with my set up...you can also phase out your big tank slowly...by one for the kitchen...and then one for the bath...and so on...

I spent a total of $441.00 which is the price of a median hot water heater in the electric model...and I feel that I am doing the planet a favor in my greed for a hot bath! Well, and my back has thanked me numerous time for not heaving that turkey fryer into the bathroom!

This is where I hid the little box...under the sink skirt.

Another plus? you don't have to have room for a large tank...they are so small! I hide mine under the sinks... and you mount them on the wall...you could run two showers, the laundry, the kitchen and whatever and  never, NEVER run out of hot water...