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PremiumSupport posted:it will pay for itself pretty quickly I'm not so sure a 5-year payback is what I would consider pretty quick, especially since $500 is probably way low. For a house that has never had gas, even if the run to the new meter is free, adding piping inside the house by a licensed installer is probably going to cost well over $1000. Your napkin math also doesn't factor in the fact that most areas charge a monthly service/meter fee for having gas, which is independent of the actual usage. In some areas, this isn't insignificant and can be $20+ per month. Natural gas is almost always the cheapest way to heat things (water/house/clothes dryer) in most areas of the country, but depending on electric rates, paying tons of money to convert to gas may take longer to pay back than people typically stay in a house.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:38
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Maybe I missed it but is there any reason you don't want to stick with a traditional tank heater? I know tankless is the new hotness(literally) but unless you build for it from scratch the results are usually less than stellar. I have some friends with a dual gas tankless heater setup in their home and there's still as much of a wait for hot water as my tank unit. If you get an energy efficient one it doesn't really even use that much more gas/electricity to keep water hot. We're also in Texas where it doesn't get very cold, but if you live up north, expect your tankless to not be able to keep water as hot as you want as the inlet water temperature plummets. I've read a lot of issues in regards to that. I wanted to go tankless in my house because of size restrictions but I ended up going with kind of a hybrid high-btu unit and other than having my first unit be a lemon, it's been great.
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Aug 22, 2019 19:10
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SpartanIvy posted:if you live up north, expect your tankless to not be able to keep water as hot as you want as the inlet water temperature plummets. I've read a lot of issues in regards to that. If this is true, those tankless units were not sized correctly when installed. I live in northern Minnesota, just about as "up north" as you can get without being Canadian and I have zero issues with the tankless heater keeping up when inlet temperature drops.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:51
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Another note regarding electric tankless heaters is that they need gigantic electric circuits powering them, like "you'll need to upgrade the service from the pole to your house" big.
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Aug 22, 2019 23:01
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Tankless waterheaters are an overpriced unneeded hassle unless you really need that space saving. Quintuply so for electric. They're cool for keeping up with the joneses though if that's your thing.
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Aug 23, 2019 00:55
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Thanks everyone. I guess I assumed they must be efficient if they're, you know...being offered rebates through an efficiency program. And yeah, to what some others are saying, it could be a long while to get savings on getting my gas connected, depending on price. Right now, going from my previous house, I was paying just over $20 a month just for the connection. Even if I used no gas that month at all, it would be around $24. I still do want to look into it at some point since, as said, even my heat is electric and that will almost certainly be more expensive to heat than if I already had a gas hookup and furnace (though not sure what the comparison would be on, say, forced hot air like my last place, or a hot water baseboard system. I assume the baseboards are more efficient, but a more expensive install?)
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Aug 23, 2019 16:33
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I did an electric baseboard to forced air conversion on my house a year after I moved in. That's actually why I went with the tankless heater, there was no room in the utility closet for both a furnace and a tank of water. House is 1452 square feet and had no existing ductwork. Total cost of the install including water heater, gas piping, furnace, air conditioner, ductwork, and labor was just over $12,000. I went from paying almost $600 electric bills 5 months out of the year to paying around $250 for electric and gas combined. Your mileage may vary. PremiumSupport fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 19:32
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DrBouvenstein posted:Thanks everyone. I guess I assumed they must be efficient if they're, you know...being offered rebates through an efficiency program. They are incredibly efficient, but that doesn't include the installation headache. Electricity to Heat is one of the most efficient conversions you can do, the problem is you need to overcome the thermal mass of several gallons per minute of water flowing by which takes a LOT of kilowatts of power immediately. This is easier to do with fire, as you can just make more fire, though it is less efficient than electricity it's way easier to make work.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:09
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PremiumSupport posted:electric baseboard The only thing worse than electric baseboard is using a series of 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs to heat your house. And it's only a tiny bit worse.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:23
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Just coil a poo poo load of copper pipe in to a 50 gallon drum, connected to your water source/hot water pipes. Then light a fire around it. Hillbilly hot water.
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Aug 23, 2019 21:27
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wesleywillis posted:Just coil a poo poo load of copper pipe in to a 50 gallon drum, connected to your water source/hot water pipes. Then light a fire around it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UahNEV8STA
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Aug 23, 2019 21:32
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wesleywillis posted:Just coil a poo poo load of copper pipe in to a 50 gallon drum, connected to your water source/hot water pipes. Then light a fire around it. You pretty much described a wood furnace. And that's definitely a thing.
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Aug 23, 2019 21:44
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Motronic posted:The only thing worse than electric baseboard is using a series of 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs to heat your house. And it's only a tiny bit worse. It's really too bad that electricity never became 'too cheap to meter' like people were predicting back in the 70s, because electric baseboard heaters are awesome on everything except cost to operate: dead simple/reliable, safe (no CO worries), cheap to buy/replace, completely silent, no maintenance except a vacuum, and you can dial the room you're using to the temp you want without heating unused rooms or having vastly different temps upstairs/downstairs
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Aug 23, 2019 23:18
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Absolutely....they are amazingly good for point of use/control every room individually. But nuke plants licenses are basically at a standstill (not judging either way, I don't know enough) and solar/wind/whatever storage methods are still in the 1980s or worse. So "safe, clean, too cheap to meter" isn't happening any time soon.
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Aug 23, 2019 23:33
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Motronic posted:(not judging either way, I don't know enough) Brb, gonna install a nuclear reactor in my new house so I can FINALLY have the potential to know more about something than Motronic. My best friend is a nuclear engineer, so I'll be fine.
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Aug 26, 2019 20:44
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DrBouvenstein posted:Brb, gonna install a nuclear reactor in my new house so I can FINALLY have the potential to know more about something than Motronic. On very rare occasions, we help him in the plumbing thread.
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Aug 26, 2019 20:55
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kid sinister posted:On very rare occasions, we help him in the plumbing thread. I don't do so well with waste plumbing. At least when poo poo is pressurized you can tell if you screwed up pretty quickly.
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Aug 26, 2019 20:58
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Motronic posted:I don't do so well with waste plumbing. At least when poo poo is pressurized you can tell if you screwed up pretty quickly. Yeah one of the few things I know about plumbing is that the poo poo should never be pressurised.
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Aug 26, 2019 20:59
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Jaded Burnout posted:Yeah one of the few things I know about plumbing is that the poo poo should never be pressurised. Clearly you've never dealt with a macerator toilet, wherein poo poo flows uphill.
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Aug 26, 2019 21:02
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Bad Munki posted:Clearly you've never dealt with a macerator toilet, wherein poo poo flows uphill. Sounds like my boss needs one!!!!!!
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Aug 26, 2019 21:05
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Jaded Burnout posted:Sounds like my boss needs one!!!!!! 
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Aug 26, 2019 21:08
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Jaded Burnout posted:Yeah one of the few things I know about plumbing is that the poo poo should never be pressurised. You've obviously never eaten Taco Bell.
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Aug 27, 2019 00:11
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kid sinister posted:You've obviously never eaten Taco Bell. He said "should," and since arguably one should never eat Taco Bell, it all lines up.
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Aug 27, 2019 00:46
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I'm not sure what my roommate did when she swapped out the shower head, but it's now got a permanent drip. Google indicates that it's probably just the cartridge on the faucet being worn and needing to be replaced. It's an apartment so I can just call maintenance to fix it, but it's in her bedroom and someone will need to be home to watch the cats (she's out for a while for medical reasons), and I can't take any more time off right now. Is it a bad temporary solution to just stick a valve on it until the stars are realigned, especially since no one will be using that shower for at least a month?
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Aug 27, 2019 15:51
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Google showerhead shut off valve, they're like $7
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Aug 28, 2019 23:38
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Posted in the house thread but this is probably a better thread for it. I got a fridge a while ago a year ago and never hooked up the waterline to it. Now I'm looking to do it, and I'm deciding what I need to get. I'm thinking it might not hurt to install a shutoff valve, the current existing waterline doesn't have a dedicated shutoff in the basement. Is it as easy as cutting the copper down to the floor, then adding a shutoff valve there, and connecting the copper to the fridge? Or should I use a plastic tube to connect to fridge (friend who sold me the fridge said never to use plastic).    Also, the compression fitting on the end of the copper obviously needs replaced, any recommendations on the best one for that?
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Sep 1, 2019 21:30
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Medullah posted:
Definitely don't use plastic. You can buy stainless sleeved rubber hoses (similar to ones for washing machines) for fridge lines e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Everflow-Supplies-2662-NL-Stainless-Fittings/dp/B01BTY5AR8 They are 1/4" compression on both ends. They sell specific valves for that, or you can do what I did and just use a standard 1/2 ball valve and buy the right adapter fitting. I, like you just have the line going up through the floor from the basement. I don't really see the point of the hookup boxes, since it's hidden behind the fridge, and I'd rather run downstairs if I needed to turn it off than try to wheel the fridge out.
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Sep 2, 2019 01:02
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B-Nasty posted:. I, like you just have the line going up through the floor from the basement. I don't really see the point of the hookup boxes, since it's hidden behind the fridge, and I'd rather run downstairs if I needed to turn it off than try to wheel the fridge out. That's actually a drat good point. I connected the line successfully and was going to install the cutoff tomorrow, but now I'm just going to leave as is. The shut-off valve is about 5 feet from the bottom of the stairs anyway.
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Sep 2, 2019 01:29
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B-Nasty posted:I don't really see the point of the hookup boxes, since it's hidden behind the fridge, and I'd rather run downstairs if I needed to turn it off than try to wheel the fridge out. That's really situational. Even though my fridge is in a complete recessed cabinet I can pull it out easily since it's on wheels and level as it is. At teh previous house I needed to "land" the feet to keep it level so pulling it out would have been a project. In the new house where I could shut it of from the basement I'd need to jump into a crawlspace to do so. There is no one best answer. Only education about what is possible and thinking about what makes sense.
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Sep 2, 2019 01:58
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B-Nasty posted:Definitely don't use plastic. Why is this, by the way? Temperature or vibration or..?
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Sep 2, 2019 09:58
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Jaded Burnout posted:Why is this, by the way? Temperature or vibration or..? Those lines are just really cheaply made with thin plastic that gets brittle. I know of at least 3 people that had a flood due to those plastic fridge lines. Copper is usually okay, but has a tendency to kink if you move the fridge in and out. It's worth paying a few bucks more for the stainless lines and changing them out ever 10-15 years or so (i.e. when the fridge is replaced.)
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Sep 2, 2019 13:54
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Roger that
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Sep 2, 2019 15:35
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Nitrox posted:Google showerhead shut off valve, they're like $7 That's what I bought, it's working good IMHO Even came with a small amount of teflon tape so I don't have to dig around in the closet to find my existent roll of it.
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Sep 3, 2019 14:26
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Iron Crowned posted:That's what I bought, it's working good IMHO Oh thanks for the reminder, I need to buy more.
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Sep 3, 2019 20:58
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Jaded Burnout posted:Oh thanks for the reminder, I need to buy more. Then one day you find 70-rolls in the bottom of your tool bag.
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Sep 4, 2019 03:08
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PainterofCrap posted:Then one day you find 70-rolls in the bottom of your tool bag. Every time I find 70 rolls it's white when I need yellow and vise versa.
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Sep 4, 2019 04:02
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PainterofCrap posted:Then one day you find 70-rolls in the bottom of your tool bag. This is me with masking tape for sure.
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Sep 4, 2019 09:20
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Motronic posted:Every time I find 70 rolls it's white when I need yellow and vise versa. I've seen that poo poo before. Whats the difference between colours? I've seen white, yellow, and pink. I'd assume for different materials? What material = use what colour?
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Sep 4, 2019 10:58
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wesleywillis posted:I've seen that poo poo before. I don't know about pink, but yellow is for gas - propane, natural.....the white stuff doesn't' hold up for that. As far as I know, white is for "everything else". Which for me is water or air.
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Sep 4, 2019 14:11
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I think it goes: white, yellow, pink, and (IIRC) green - in order of increasing density. Pink is 'industrial' grade for deep threads and huge fittings and such. Green is for oxygen, I think.
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Sep 4, 2019 14:39
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