Remote Living > Heating
Water heater economy
OperaHouse:
I was given a water heater that didn't supply a lot of water. In cleaning the internals, I found about a 5 gal bucket worth of scale in the bottom. f you don't use high density heaters, scale never forms. It is the result of boiling on the element. Water turns to a gas and calcium is left behind. But, I also found plastic pieces. They use a plastic tube to send cold water to the bottom from the top port. Cold water immediately mixed with the hot. Tests with my heater indicated that it requires about 65W continuous to maintain temperature loss. Smaller surface area of a small tank is better. To bad two tanks cost much more than a large one.
george65:
--- Quote from: dnix71 on November 12, 2017, 06:01:00 PM ---The hotter the water the greater the difference between the water and the environment. That means greater wasted heat, as losses from the tank back into the environment, unless you increase the insulation on the tank.
--- End quote ---
Exactly what I thought.
The more powerful the hot, the stronger the urge to find cold.
But I thought I would confirm that. :0)
We don't run out of hot water so I'll leave it on the factory setting it is now. certainly more than hot enough for showering, just I like the hot water to be really hot for other things.
I just did our power bill calculation. Meter is due to be read tomorrow and I have worked out we used about $73 worth of hot water. 663 KWH @.11c or about 81C a day. I'll see how my solar setup goes with the other power and when I get a gauge on that I might look at some diversion.
At that rate, not a lot to be saved. The " Supply" charges combined are over $1 a day.
That said, the 190W panel array I have of 1.6Kw only cost me $200 so I'd probably make my money back on them in a year.
OperaHouse:
That is in line with my numbers. I'm getting back into heating water again and just started running a test to get my baseline. In a 24 hour period I used 3.3KW/day or 41 cents with my heat pump. Given a COP of about two that would be 6.6KWH/day or 82 cents.
I just ordered two Suniva 280W panels today and they will be delivered Thanksgiving day. That gets me enough time to get a good average usage. Even with a good price for panels it will be hard to pay them off at 25 cents a day. But I needed them for the development work going on. Just got in 500 big electrolytics and thinking of ordering another 600. It is good to live in the land of plenty. I'll have to do grid tie to make this pay off.
george65:
I want to get 10 Kw worth of panels on the roof excluding the 190 set which are at odds to the 22 250's I have. I'm winding the meter back atm but only because the weather has been mild and we haven't been using the AC. I thought summer was what I would have to cater for the most.
I was looking over the numbers I downloaded off the PV watts website yesterday with regards to panel angles which I thought I would go for summer.
Turns out the summer angle provides the most overall power for the year. I miscalculated that before and thought I'd take a slight loss which was fine but the correct Summer angle give more power overall than the " correct" latitude angle.
Thing I missed though is the winter dropoff. That's going to give me half the generation in the coldest part of the year as it will the hottest. I will want the AC for warmth even if not quite as much as I will for Cooling.
Might be running the Lister or one of the other diesels over winter, see how I go. If I have to lay a new conduit for heavier cable to the garage, I might put in some water pipe as well so I can run some hot water back to the house for a co-gen or even just a veg fired heater water setup.
Might just see how I go the first season. Not trying to eliminate all useage and create suspicion just get it down low enough to be passable .
Seems most people around here spend more time away on holidays than they do at home so I doubt a low bill will cause any suspicion at all. I'll bet the variances in the area are huge anyway. Some people light their places up at night like monuments every night and a lot run home businesses while others as I said, never seem to be home.
petect:
Hi George
Insulate the hell out of it. I set my water heater on 4 inches of hi-R foam with a piece of plywood over the foam. Wrapped it with some R19 fiberglas, and some poly. It's not pretty, but when I cut through the fiberglas to get at the thermostat a LOT of heat came out.
You might want to try solar preheat. I'm sure you could put something together pretty easily, and cheaply. You can probably find an example or 2 here that you can copy. https://www.builditsolar.com/
It might even turn into an Arduino project.
Pete
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