VERY OT Water heaters without a tank

My son lives in a 20 ft. camper/van and he just installed solar panels on
top. They lay flat on the roof so there is no wind resistance when driving.
The panels are small, but will provide enough electricity for lights during
a partly cloudy day when we goes fishing and is parked in a field with no
hook ups.
Barbara in SC
"Taria" wrote in message news:9EEvi.339$5Q5.78@trnddc05...
The world oil market offers it cheaper to the US?

We are having wind generators pop up a lot here in
my area these days. It is really windy here and
you might say they are taking off.
More than a few with solar but those houses are
usually built to be more passive
to make it cost effective.
Back in the Jimmy Carter days there were tax breaks
for solar water set ups. Folks financed them when
they purchased houses. They were not efficient and
I wonder if anyone even broke even on them.


Most of the folks in the kind of trailer parks
you seem to be referring to don't much work so
comparing them to working class might
not be a good choice.

Taria



Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
I think the chances are that in the lifetime of such a boiler,
that you may not save much, only break even in terms of cost,
but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by directing
the money in a different direction.

The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes
24 years to recoup the cost.


That may be true in the UK, but every city roofscape in southern
Turkey is a forest of solar heating systems. They wouldn't have
sold hundreds of thousands of them in a relatively poor country
if they weren't cost-effective quickly.

Probably there's not much difference in level of affluence between
the average Turkish working-class apartment dweller and the average
occupant of a US trailer park, except that the American is more
likely to have a car. If Americans paid a realistic price for their
oil, trailer parks would sprout solar heating units overnight.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk
==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660
4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870
0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800
739 557

I read quite a bit of this thread, and it's darned interesting. I've always
wanted instant hot-to-boiling water on tap in the kitchen! Will settle for
an electric kettle right now grin.

When I was a kid, we lived in northern Minnesota and my family used wood
heat. The last couple of places that my dad built had an interesting twist
to the wood heater. He used a two-barrel arrangement--think of a 55-gallon
drum and another drum a size or two smaller inside it. The inner barrel was
the firebox. The outer barrel had a coil of copper tubing inside it. Our
water supply was also hooked up to the tubing. The copper tubing, after
leaving the wood stove, entered baseboard heaters in all the rooms. Also
outlets to the sinks, showers, bathtubs and laundry. I come from a family
of 13 kids, and I don't believe there were ever fewer than nine kids at home
in those houses, and constant guests on weekends. Never ran out of hot
water, and they often had windows open in the winter because the house was
so warm! This was in northern Minnesota, mind you, where 30 degrees below
is not unusual. The furnace room was at the back of the house, so I don't
think there was a problem with the furnace heating the house up in
summertime while keeping water hot. But I do remember that the baseboard
heat was either on or off, no thermostatic controls. Dad liked things to be
simple and efficient.

My first husband was so impressed with Dad's double-barrel wood stove that
he built something similar (without the water heating arrangement) in our
basement and hooked it into the vent system of our propane furnace. That
setup had the advantage of keeping the floors warm all winter. He built
another in his garage so he could work on cars in comfort during the winter.

Of course, any farm with a properly managed woodlot provided plenty of wood
at that time. It's not practical now but the information is good to know in
case hard times ever come again.

Thanks for letting me ramble on...........

--
Carolyn in The Old Pueblo

If it ain't broke, you're not trying. --Red Green
If it ain't broke, it ain't mine. --Carolyn McCarty

If at first you don't succeed, switch to power tools. --Red Green
If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. --Carolyn McCarty

"Leslie & The Furbabies in MO." wrote in message
...
I've been doing some pondering- I know very dangerous! BG

Living alone now, I realized I am paying to keep a tankful of hot water
heated for many, many hours without none to minimal usage. If I shower 7
times a week, wash 3-4 loads of laundry and run the dishwasher 3-4 times
per week then I have a demand for hot water about 9 hours per week. I am
heating water 24/7 which is 168 hrs. per week- so I am paying for almost
160 hrs. of hot water that I do not need or use. I don't see putting a
water heater with a tank on a timer since I need hot water during the day
for hand washing and small jobs and the cost to reheat the entire tank
would prolly cost more than the savings if I had a timer and shut it down
for 15-18 hrs. per day.

The cost of an on-demand/tankless water heater is 3 to 5 times as
expensive as a water heater with a tank. What I am curious about is the
performance of the tankless water heater. What are the pros and cons? I
know they are quite popular outside the USA- what should I look for in
features and what should I avoid? Does anybody in the USA have one? I
assume what is available here may be very different from what others may
have???

Any thoughts?

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.