New England B.S. Thread

We just replaced our original 1986 boiler/hot water heater in September with a Weil McLain deluxe3 oil and added a 40 gallon indirect water heater to the system in anticipation of future-proofing kids using all the hot water for showers.
Hot water seems endless whenever we need it. Wasn’t too expensive and got $1200 back from Mass saves.

 

I run a similar setup - since I live alone and take short showers I don't think I will ever run out of hot water. However I did learn not to do the laundry while taking a shower...... They run off the pipe - Needless to say that was a very hot/cold/hot/cold shower.

 

True tag-team fashion!


On an unrelated note, @jethro you buy a Ford yet?

 

You'd be surprised some of the shit people in rural areas come up with...

Or conversely the quantity of them who turn themselves into human BBQ by doing things like trying to steal copper downgrounds.

 

It seems I want a unicorn and it's very hard to find. Crew Cab V8 without the snow plow prep with the 502a package. Almost every Crew Cab seems to be a family grocery getter and they get the faster V6 EB. And almost every V8 I see has the snow plow prep and isn't a Crew Cab. It's frustrating and I have given up for now.

 

Like an Eiffel Tower.

I don't have a date on mine, but I think it's probably ~2000, house used to be on oil (tank was in crawl space) but they moved it to an indirect HWH on piped NG, FHW off that. Basically - the cheapest method for heating a house, OTHER THAN DIY collecting firewood....We run at around 68°±3 all winter (65 at nights)(the lowest our thermostat goes is 55 we'll do that if we're going on a long vacation/away from the house, etc). We did that level load thing on national grid billing, helps we have a 1200sqft ranch, BUT our gas bill is 85/mo.

I have seen some shenanigans I just figure you've got some better ones

 

Or the leaning tower of Pisa? Nope....thats just the Taco lean lol

 

The unit we need to get should be plenty enough for filling a bath tub. It has 3 separate heating elements and can sustain output at like 140 degrees if I wanted it to. I think things have come a long way since then, but god damn that sounds awful. My only other option is to do a propane hot water heater that has to be mounted outside (hard pass). Or I could always try to squeeze one of those short and wide pancake heaters in there, but that concerns me as well.

That's what I'm sayin!

 

It'll be quite the session

 

I had a Rinnai tankless in my home (since sold). The thing was awesome. Propane. Could do laundry, the dishwasher and shower at the same time. Agreed, they've come a long way since they first came out.

 

My parents had an on-demand propane for about a year, then they took it out and went back to an electric tank. The well water was super cold and it cost a fortune in propane to run the on-demand unit.

I considered an on-demand electric for home, then started running numbers and decided against it. With our 24 cents per kwh rates, every way I figured it it would have cost me much more than my tank.

What I would consider is a hybrid heat-pump tank water heater. A friend got one and said his electric bill went down about $30/month with it. Added benefit is it dehumidifies the basement.

 

Christ that's a lot for power. Mine is $0.0706/kwh, so adding the electric tankless doesn't scare me

 

I was literally just looking at those hybrid heat pump water heaters...

 

We put one of those in about a year ago. Had to go with ‘State’ brand as it was the only unit my installer went with. (Went with an installer as to not leave my wife without hot water if I messed it up) Noticeable drop in the electric bill by around $20-30 - sometimes more. That’s with adding almost double the capacity too.

It replaced an at least 25 year old electric I resurrected about 10 years ago by replacing the heating rods.

Edit: Just checked my bill and saw that my electricity usage was down 22.9% as compared with last year. The only difference is the HW Heater.. Also actually read my bill and couldn’t believe they go 5 spaces after the decimal...

 

I was thinking a while back of doing something like this

http://solarhomestead.com/using-your-wood-stove-to-heat-water/

But use it completely hooked up to the heating system. And find a way to make it flow without using a pump, so that I could in theory use my FHW system off-grid if the power goes out, just get a fire going and it will then in turn heat the whole house on its own. I'm sure there are ways to do it but I didn't get very far with that hair brained idea. Although, I do think my current idea of rewiring so my HVAC plugs into a dedicated circuit (I think that's the RI code, it can run off a plug BUT it has to be the only thing on that circuit), is not super hair brained - that way if the power goes out, unplug it, get one of those dinky generators, plug it into that and my HVAC system can run completely on its own. I would prioritize the heat only, but could look at doing the AC too.

 

You two sure know how to make a Marine feel right at home