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H110Hawk posted:THE GOVERNMENT is across the street from my house cutting up a giant rear end tree limb RIGHT NOW. And even using an electric chainsaw now per their rules promulgated in... The 90's. I see the Caribbean Agave across the street doing it's 7 year sprout and then die. Those things grow really fast and can handle lots of rain. I just keep the remaining ones I have in pots since they are sort of a pita to manage in the yard as opposed to the slow growing mini blue agave I replaced them with. After it's done the flowers at the top of the sprout grow thousands of lil' babies that are easy to replant in pots or give away.  I actually bought and sharpened up a coa to handle mine, but holy crap the Caribbean agave are extra tough and the thing will just bounce off it. Also needed a mule to pull out the corpse of the old one as they weigh a ton and have aggressive roots.  Keyser_Soze fucked around with this message at 19:50 on May 31, 2023 |
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May 31, 2023 19:43
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skipdogg posted:Most of what folks call stucco these days is actually an Exterior Insulation Finishing System(EIFS), aka synthetic stucco. Depending on how and when it was installed, the EFIS could be acting as the moisture barrier to the home. Creating penetrations in the moisture barrier of the home is generally a bad idea if you can avoid it. Yes you can seal it up, but eventually that seal will probably fail, and by the time someone notices water has gotten behind the EIFS and rotted the wood out creating a very expensive repair. Ohh interesting. Maybe mine is a misnomer then calling it stucco? The house is just a tract home built in 2004.
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May 31, 2023 20:08
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skipdogg posted:Most of what folks call stucco these days is actually an Exterior Insulation Finishing System(EIFS), aka synthetic stucco. Depending on how and when it was installed, the EFIS could be acting as the moisture barrier to the home. Creating penetrations in the moisture barrier of the home is generally a bad idea if you can avoid it. Yes you can seal it up, but eventually that seal will probably fail, and by the time someone notices water has gotten behind the EIFS and rotted the wood out creating a very expensive repair. I used to work for a stucco company, I want to add some caveats to this. Because of a lot of the issues you mentioned, use of EIFS has been regulated quite a bit even outside of legal channels and through the inability to insure it here in Denver we had three big condo towers with EIFS that failed and had mold and rot issues. Maybe not mold, but mold appearing, anyway. They had to demo all of the exterior facade and refinish it on one building. Some steel studs had completely rusted away in 6 years. After that I worked for a general contractor and we could not build any project with EIFS because our insurer wouldn't cover it. That was the official line anyway, they probably could get a rider but we had a strong incentive to get it changed or walk away. Other regions have other attitudes towards it of course. And age and class have a big impact on what's installed. A southern California home from the 60s or a custom build would likely have true stucco on it.
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May 31, 2023 20:09
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fletcher posted:Ohh interesting. Maybe mine is a misnomer then calling it stucco? The house is just a tract home built in 2004. LOL that you posted this while I was typing. That's probably EIFS, yeah. Does it sound like Styrofoam when you knock on it or does it hurt your knuckles because it's solid cement?
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May 31, 2023 20:12
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StormDrain posted:LOL that you posted this while I was typing. That's probably EIFS, yeah. Does it sound like Styrofoam when you knock on it or does it hurt your knuckles because it's solid cement? It feels rock hard and hurts my knuckles. Home is in California
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May 31, 2023 20:26
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Since the end of last week I have planted 16 small boxwood shrubs  I probably dug the holes too small on most of them, I didn't know you were supposed to dig way bigger than the pot, so let's see how many survive the transplant shock. If some die, I will do it again but better.
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May 31, 2023 21:36
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fletcher posted:It feels rock hard and hurts my knuckles. Home is in California There you go then it may be a traditional three coat stucco. Any EIFS I ever encountered definitely had a feeling of being low mass when you tap it. I wouldn't be surprised if your area had, at least at the time, a strong workforce of stucco mechanics. Our home in central California was, I learned all about it when we replaced windows and patched it back in. Now if you said Las Vegas (Henderson), 2004, almost 100% it would have been EIFS. Every place I saw there seemed to be the fastest slapdash construction at the cheapest cost in the hottest area so the added insulation was a benefit but man, the thought of Styrofoam on a house hurts me.
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May 31, 2023 21:54
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Thanks for the info! Soooo....is my original plan ok then?
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May 31, 2023 22:05
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So, it seems like the consensus is that tankless water heaters are good, but that electric tankless water heaters are not so great? I was looking to replace my thirty-three-year-old tank with something newer and more efficient while I clean out the closet it's in, and I was thinking that going full-electric would harmonize well with not having a gas stove any longer and eventually getting solar panels. But the plumber I asked, and a general search of this thread for "tankless", seems to indicate that people aren't that hot on them, although the Department of Energy seems to think they're just as good as gas for some reason.
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Jun 1, 2023 04:29
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That's a consensus? I thought they where pretty lovely at everything compared to the tank versions, except making unlimited hot water once running.
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Jun 1, 2023 04:46
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You need to dump a lot of energy into water to heat it. If you're going tankless, then you have to dump that heat into the water in the time it takes the water to flow through the heater, which implies some pretty serious power draw. Like, let's say that your shower draws 2.5 gallons per minute (~10 liters per minute), and that you need to raise your water temperature from 5C to 25C (very very roughly 40F to 80F). You're delivering 167g of water per second; to raise that amount of water's temperature by 20 degrees C takes 167 * 20 * 4.184 = 14kJ of energy (4.184 is the heat capacity of water, i.e. the amount of energy needed to raise it by 1 degree). That's per second, so the continuous power draw is 14kW. If you have a 220V power supply, it'd need to be able to deliver 60A of current to provide that much power. That's a lot!
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Jun 1, 2023 04:57
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Yeah tankless electrics are a option of last resort. If you want to replace your tanked heater with something more efficient and throw money away install a heat pump model. But I would just stick to what you've got or go to a bog standard electric tank. You often will also need to replace your panel and potentially even your service to install a tankless electric.
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Jun 1, 2023 05:11
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I want to concrete in the corner posts for my side gates. I could tell they were not close to any utilities when I auger a hole, but Mrs. Slidebite being a surveyor made drat well and sure we did a line locate. I mean, it's certainly not a bad idea so no problem. Line locator came out, confirmed there was nothing in the area, and broke my FTTH connection in the fiber box next to my hose when he was locating it. Because it's an above ground break, even though their own locating people did it, and he was standing right next to me when I phoned them, it's going to take 24-48 hours for their RUSH EMERGENCY TICKET. To the locators credit, he tried calling his personal connections that do that stuff for the phone co and it was so close to 5 they just didn't answer his calls. So now shitposting with my wifi hotspot on my phone for probably a week because they suck 
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Jun 1, 2023 05:16
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fletcher posted:Thanks for the info! Soooo....is my original plan ok then? I would use an appropriately sized anchor on the stucco end of the rig. It’s not really a material you should run plain screws into. Otherwise, your plan seems probably OK.
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Jun 1, 2023 05:29
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:You need to dump a lot of energy into water to heat it. If you're going tankless, then you have to dump that heat into the water in the time it takes the water to flow through the heater, which implies some pretty serious power draw. So, how would my experience likely be different if I were using a gas-powered tankless heater?
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Jun 1, 2023 06:43
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Rand Brittain posted:So, how would my experience likely be different if I were using a gas-powered tankless heater? Your lights wouldn't be as likely to flicker, you wouldn't have to pay an electrician to run a big honking 4AWG cable to the installation site, and your monthly bill will be much lower because (currently) gas is much cheaper than electricity joule for joule. If the concern is being able to run the heater off of solar or a battery a tankless electric heater is a bad option because it draws such an absurd amount of power and turns on/off dozens of times a second to maintain the proper temperature rise in the water. The gas tankless on the other hand will draw a couple hundred watts at most, you can actually run them quite easily off of a small UPS.
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Jun 1, 2023 12:37
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If any poo poo is given for the environment in this equation I would've thought any tank heater would be better than any tankless.
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Jun 1, 2023 12:48
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His Divine Shadow posted:If any poo poo is given for the environment in this equation I would've thought any tank heater would be better than any tankless. How so? Tankless is more efficient from a power perspective because you're not keeping 40-50 gallons of water at 120 degrees for 23 unused hours a day. For tankless you use a poo poo-ton of power to heat it up on demand, but once you shut off the tap the power is no longer needed. Only environmental concern I can see would be that you're wasting a ton of water waiting for it to get hot. Rand Brittain posted:So, how would my experience likely be different if I were using a gas-powered tankless heater? Instead of a massive electrical circuit, you need a massive gas supply. Your meter may or may not be big enough, depending on what other gas appliances you have. I dunno otherwise, though. Power is power, and thermodynamics is thermodynamics. You still need a huge amount of energy to quickly change the water temperature.
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Jun 1, 2023 13:09
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Granted that was just my gut feeling there. But rapidly heating something tends to incur more losses into the environment and modern water heaters are pretty well insulated and the hot water sections itself and doesn't have to run often, nor does it need it be heated all the way from cold to hot again, but usually just a bit less hot to real hot again. Usually it's also sized so that you aren't reheating the same water over and over again but new water as the heated water is used up. Apparently there seems to be a consensus in the US that tankless heaters are 20-50% better, but I dunno what kind of tank heaters they are comparing to or what kind of insulation is common on US water heaters. They don't look anything like ours anyway. Just hard for me to think such a device could be better than a well insulated tank. Particularly if it runs on gas. But perhaps I was wrong.
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Jun 1, 2023 14:03
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His Divine Shadow posted:Apparently there seems to be a consensus in the US that tankless heaters are 20-50% better, Where are you find this "information"? It's pretty common knowledge that tanked water heaters and indirect fired heater tanks are generally quite efficient these days and for the last decade or so. There are stickers on the front of them (and all appliances sold in the US) that says how much they cost to run per year in specific tests so you can compare multiple items against each other. Tankless heaters take up less space but waste water because you have to wait for them to heat up when hot water hasn't been used for a while. They make sense if you really really need to save that space and are willing to pay a premium to do so, need basically unlimited hot water for some reason, or in a place where hot water is not used for days at a time.
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Jun 1, 2023 14:24
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For most use cases tankless is more efficient than a standard tanked. However with heat pump units being available, if tankless expensive, they are in theory the most efficient on the market. Insulation on the tank (which you can augment with a tank wrap) makes environmental losses negligible. In general, water heating is likely one of the lowest environmental impact things you're doing in a home compared to conditioning the air and cooking. I would suggest, dollar for dollar, ice cap for ice cap, swapping your standard tank for another standard tank. If you already have or are going to get soon a solar system then swap it for tanked electric. I would jump on solar with my extra dollars rather than worrying about the environmental impact of my water heater. Edit: To add to what Motronic said - We swapped from gas tank to gas tankless at huge expense. This is because the tank was literally in our tiny rear end kitchen and we were able to convert the space into a MUCH needed pantry. This increased our pantry space by probably 5x-10x compared to this tiny cabinet thing we still use. We used tankless only because we didn't have room outside to build the little house a tanked water heater needs. It now takes an extra minute and a half to get hot water in the kitchen, around 45s longer using the tub filler at full bore in the bathroom. We use around 1.5-2.0x the gas depending on the season. We all like long hot showers. The dishwasher literally doesn't get hot water unless we've been using the sink. I should swap the hose to the cold bib. It literally fires the heater, draws hot water probably 2/3 of the way to the kitchen, and then is full and ready to wash dishes. By the rinse cycle it's cold again. H110Hawk fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 14:28
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^^^^ Our tank heater is inside our heat pump in the mud room, it's quite a space efficient use for us. And being heat pump driven it's quite effective. Motronic posted:Where are you find this "information"? I googled it and got a dearth of places saying how loving great tankless heaters were, there was like one opposing site. I dunno the veracity of any of these claims but most places seemed to agree so there seemed to be a consensus anyway in US sources. Maybe google search is just worthless though and just gives me sites who want to sell me tankless heaters. Tankless heaters are almost unheard of in the nordics, I've heard of them for like summer cottages. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 14:44
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Per the DOE:https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/tankless-or-demand-type-water-heaters posted:For homes that use 41 gallons or less of hot water daily, demand water heaters can be 24%–34% more energy efficient than conventional storage tank water heaters. They can be 8%–14% more energy efficient for homes that use a lot of hot water -- around 86 gallons per day. I don't know the date of these numbers so maybe tanked water heaters are more efficient than when they did this math, but there you are. edit: this is purely about energy efficiency. My understanding is that there are a bunch of downsides to tankless, such as higher up front cost, more maintenance, and water waste waiting for hot water. But I don't know enough about that end of it. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 14:47
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The energy efficiency numbers do not take into account increased water waste. Also, most things that show up in generic google searches about tankless heaters are basically advertisements - there's big money in convincing homeowners to switch to them, and I think we're all quite familiar that the most popular advertising methods targeted at homeowners is green grifting and/or energy cost savings. They are not a general solution to all water heating problems, but they are better at some things in some situations. I've yet to identify the situation for an electric tankless in a residential setting. (those absolutely have their place in commercial)
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Jun 1, 2023 14:53
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H110Hawk posted:For most use cases tankless is more efficient than a standard tanked. However with heat pump units being available, if tankless expensive, they are in theory the most efficient on the market. Insulation on the tank (which you can augment with a tank wrap) makes environmental losses negligible. In general, water heating is likely one of the lowest environmental impact things you're doing in a home compared to conditioning the air and cooking. I would suggest, dollar for dollar, ice cap for ice cap, swapping your standard tank for another standard tank. If you already have or are going to get soon a solar system then swap it for tanked electric. Water heating is roughly 20% of home energy use, which is very significant. That said cutting hot water use is much much more effective at reducing that energy use and installing an "efficient" heater might even boost your energy consumption because you feel like you can use more hot water. A solar water heating system might be worth considering, with an electric backup. A solar system can produce loads of hot water even in overcast weather and cold environments, although very cold environments need a slightly less thermally efficient indirect system which runs antifreeze through the solar collector.
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Jun 1, 2023 15:05
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Anecdotal evidence and all, but my gas bill dropped by half in the summer when I switched my old gas tanked heater to tankless. I’m a one person household that doesn’t use a ton of hot water so maybe that makes me in the ‘most efficient for a tankless heater’ category. I’m in a fairly warm climate where the heater isn’t having to raise the incoming water temp a ton and I’m in one of the wettest areas of the country so I’m not too worried about the little bit of extra wasted water. As far as waiting for hot water, I don’t think it’s particularly longer than with my tanked heater. They are in about the same location and when the tankless thing fires up the water gets hot real fast. Except for the initial install cost, A+++ it’s great I can fill my gigantic tub or take forever showers. I did have to get my gas meter upgraded and run a new, larger gas line to the water heater, but the gas co. took care of upgrading the meter and since I’m on a crawlspace, running a new copper tube gas line wasn’t a big expense.
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Jun 1, 2023 17:21
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nitsuga posted:I would use an appropriately sized anchor on the stucco end of the rig. It’s not really a material you should run plain screws into. Otherwise, your plan seems probably OK. What sort of anchor should I be using on the stucco end of the rig?
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Jun 1, 2023 17:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Anecdotal evidence and all, but my gas bill dropped by half in the summer when I switched my old gas tanked heater to tankless. I’m a one person household that doesn’t use a ton of hot water so maybe that makes me in the ‘most efficient for a tankless heater’ category. I’m in a fairly warm climate where the heater isn’t having to raise the incoming water temp a ton and I’m in one of the wettest areas of the country so I’m not too worried about the little bit of extra wasted water. As far as waiting for hot water, I don’t think it’s particularly longer than with my tanked heater. They are in about the same location and when the tankless thing fires up the water gets hot real fast. I'll add another anecdote in favor of gas tankless. I have a gas tankless heater, switched from gas tank heater 5 or 6 years ago to make room for some rearranging we did. I have no complaints. It heats up in 5-10 seconds even at the farthest tap. My gas usage did not go up, nor did my water usage.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:01
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I don't remember the episode, but the Technology Connections guy did kind of a deep dive on water heaters a few months ago. I don't recall the specifics but I think the boiled down basics of it was not to bother, especially if its electric and you can time it to heat during off-peak. I'm hotspotting with a lovely cell connection right now so I can't link but I think it was 4-6 months ago. I found it interesting as I always assumed tankless/on demand was the way to go.
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Jun 1, 2023 19:35
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Muir posted:I'll add another anecdote in favor of gas tankless. I have a gas tankless heater, switched from gas tank heater 5 or 6 years ago to make room for some rearranging we did. I have no complaints. It heats up in 5-10 seconds even at the farthest tap. My gas usage did not go up, nor did my water usage. Same! The added space in my garage after getting rid of my tank water heater to a gas tankless was very nice to have as well. I didn't notice any noticeable difference in how long it takes for hot water to reach the tap. Mine is a Noritz, EZ98 was the model I believe.
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Jun 1, 2023 20:23
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I don't understand this about having to run tankless to get them to temp. You can hook them in a pressurized loop so that they are hot at taps or reduce the time-to-hot. It's not mutually exclusive, but that might be hard to retrofit depending on your plumbing.
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Jun 1, 2023 21:58
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Hed posted:I don't understand this about having to run tankless to get them to temp. You can hook them in a pressurized loop so that they are hot at taps or reduce the time-to-hot. It's not mutually exclusive, but that might be hard to retrofit depending on your plumbing. A recirc line and circulator pump. Which means you're holding the line and the water heater at temperature all the time. It's a trade off of energy efficiency vs. water efficiency. If you don't give a poo poo at all about energy efficiency the clear choice for comfort and hot water NOW and hot water forever is a gas tankless with a recirc loop turned on all the time. Is there something else you don't understand about the trade offs?
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Jun 1, 2023 22:03
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Hed posted:I don't understand this about having to run tankless to get them to temp. You can hook them in a pressurized loop so that they are hot at taps or reduce the time-to-hot. It's not mutually exclusive, but that might be hard to retrofit depending on your plumbing. I feel like that kinda defeats the purpose of going tankless though, since then you essentially have a "tank" you are keeping hot, the tank in this case being the pipes that are throughout the home. Sure it's nice having water that is instantly hot, but lots of energy consumed 24/7 to be able to do that!
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Jun 1, 2023 22:07
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fletcher posted:I feel like that kinda defeats the purpose of going tankless though, since then you essentially have a "tank" you are keeping hot, the tank in this case being the pipes that are throughout the home. Sure it's nice having water that is instantly hot, but lots of energy consumed 24/7 to be able to do that! I honestly had never considered an efficiency angle until this discussion. It makes some sense, it's just not how I had ever seen them presented.
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Jun 1, 2023 23:28
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I'd only ever heard of them as an efficiency thing, or a space thing. My main reasons for wanting to get one were to have the space back in that closet, and because I could put a tankless one outdoors and closer to the center of the house rather than the end, in hopes of getting hot water faster in the showers. I dunno, if the efficiency gains aren't that huge, would something like a heat pump be better?
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Jun 1, 2023 23:39
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Rand Brittain posted:I'd only ever heard of them as an efficiency thing, or a space thing. My main reasons for wanting to get one were to have the space back in that closet, and because I could put a tankless one outdoors and closer to the center of the house rather than the end, in hopes of getting hot water faster in the showers. I dunno, if the efficiency gains aren't that huge, would something like a heat pump be better? Heat pumps beat the pants off of other options for energy efficiency. They're kinda slow, though, so you can't get 'em tankless. And they're more expensive than other types of tanked water heaters. The utility in my area is offering a big subsidy for heat pump water heaters, though, so I've been meaning to get one installed. Only problem is I need to run a new outlet to power it, and my main panel is full, so to do that I need to install a sub panel...
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Jun 1, 2023 23:45
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Heat pump water heaters are also enormous as they have crazy good insulation. Another factor is they are considerably slower than a traditional electric water heater, so it takes a long time to recharge after using a lot of hot water.
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Jun 1, 2023 23:56
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I put a natural gas tankless heater in my last house for efficiency reasons. I was able to get a 95% efficient condensing water heater for not a lot more dollars than a standard 65ish% efficient tanked heater. They make 95ish% efficient condensing tanked water heater but they were literally three times the price at the time. My tankless was fine. It turned on with little flow and heated fast, the difference in water flow was negligible (for me at least). I also had nice consistent hot water temps. It was a lot quieter than the regular power vented tanked water heater that it replaced, too.
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Jun 2, 2023 00:00
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I would simply get the best efficiency on my water heater by using geothermal energy and building my house in a hotspring.
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Jun 2, 2023 00:06
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Motronic posted:Is there something else you don't understand about the trade offs? No. Everyone here was just acting like tankless has to mean waiting for it to spool up. I don’t want people considering them who don’t care about efficiency to think it’s inherent to a tankless.
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Jun 2, 2023 01:22
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