Geocaching Australia

The time is coming to replace our old electric hot water system<p>
So, the options these days appear to be - new electric, gas, solar, heat pump<p>
What are people experiences of changing from electric to other types and any <br>
problems with the rebates?

Not sure about the rebate stuff, our house had a heatpump fitted when we bought it, and it costs us (2 adults and 2 kids) $18 per 1/4 for hot water. I see that now you can get a system that incorporates a heatpump and solar

I like the gas on demand one I installed back in Adelaide. Unfortunately I split with Fab soon after that so never really got to see the savings.

We would certainly have considered solar but it was a rush job as the old gas storage one started leaking at an alarming rate.

Frog puts on metallurgist hat.

Mark a reminder on the outside of your hot water service to replace the Mg anode ever 5 years. No plumber will do it for you as he/she just want to sell you a new service in 10 years.

Freddo wrote:Frog puts on metallurgist hat.

Mark a reminder on the outside of your hot water service to replace the Mg anode ever 5 years. No plumber will do it for you as he/she just want to sell you a new service in 10 years.

It will also depend on your water supply as to how long the sacrificial anode will last for. Bore water = 1-2 years tops, town treated water with no softener = considerably more, desal water = less than town water. You should be able to get a bit of an idea of how long it will last by chatting to your locals.

A guy at work installed an instantaneous ELECTRIC hot water service in his new house (45kW 3 Phase unit IIRC, but smaller single phase units are available.)

Heats the water in 5-10 seconds, no wasted energy in storage etc, very small footprint for the heater, thinking about going this route myself

Something to consider.....

My vote would be for Solar combined with some sort of on demand system if thats possible.

Regards
John

Some great rebates with solar going at the moment.

CraigRat wrote:A guy at work installed an instantaneous ELECTRIC hot water service in his new house (45kW 3 Phase unit IIRC, but smaller single phase units are available.)

Heats the water in 5-10 seconds, no wasted energy in storage etc, very small footprint for the heater, thinking about going this route myself

Something to consider.....

AstroDad tells me these units were out in the 50's but were soon "phased" out as they were problematic. Maybe the new ones are a lot better. It's great not to have gas connected as the $40+ per quarter to have it connected (in SA anyway) would almost pay for the amount of electricity to run the thing.

TeamAstro wrote:AstroDad tells me these units were out in the 50's but were soon "phased" out as they were problematic. Maybe the new ones are a lot better. It's great not to have gas connected as the $40+ per quarter to have it connected (in SA anyway) would almost pay for the amount of electricity to run the thing.

I'd presume these are a bit different to the 50's ones, I remember my grandfather telling me of one he had,
I think these have a thermoblock in them much like modern espresso machines, only bigger.
We don't have reticulated gas where I am, and we are adding another bathroom, and so I've started looking to up our capacity, or go instant. I'm watching this thread with interest!

Quite funny as I was thinking of posting the same topic on another forum.

We've bought a house and are planning to renovate the bathroom and ensuite. Part of the renovations include removed the gas hot water tank inside the house and replacing it with instant hot water.

In the research I've done I found two complaints:

- if the water is not running at full pressure through the tap, the temperature can fluctuate. It's also impossible to have a luke warm shower in summer.
- there is a lot of water wasted waiting for the water to heat up.

The latter I thought was an issue with all hot water services and depended more on the distance the water travelled through the house and whether those pipes were insulated.

The first issue seems to be solved by installing the control panels at each outlet. Is this correct?

CraigRat wrote:

TeamAstro wrote:AstroDad tells me these units were out in the 50's but were soon "phased" out as they were problematic. Maybe the new ones are a lot better. It's great not to have gas connected as the $40+ per quarter to have it connected (in SA anyway) would almost pay for the amount of electricity to run the thing.

I'd presume these are a bit different to the 50's ones, I remember my grandfather telling me of one he had,
I think these have a thermoblock in them much like modern espresso machines, only bigger.
We don't have reticulated gas where I am, and we are adding another bathroom, and so I've started looking to up our capacity, or go instant. I'm watching this thread with interest!

These instant electric showerhead units were pretty ubiquitous in South America. We called them suicide showers and soon learned to not touch the shower tap when standing in the stream of water to avoid electric shocks.






Here's the link if the image doesn't work
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=8 ... =810987592

We've had instant gas since our water tank broke 8 years ago, the unit is still running fine and it produces hot water quickly. Not sure about running costs though, as we have gas everything else it's hard to tell.

One huge vote for instant gas hot water here.

I am sure solar HW has it's advantages but it is really expensive, even with rebates, and still uses gas to keep the water up to temperature.
Instant gas only creates the hot water you need, and at the temperature you want it. I only heat my shower to 38C, don't add any cold water.

So, for spring, summer and autumn, when I am not using gas for heating, my gas consumption (not including connection charges) for hot water and cooking is only $15 / quarter.

And the money I saved on not putting in solar hot water bought enough solar electricity to not only pay my whole electricity bill, but also enough back to pay for the hot water gas ! (NB rebates may no longer be the same, but I think the proposed new ones are at a level that would give you the same rebate on the same size solar electricity system I have)

OK, different households have different requirements. For me hot water tends to get used in 2 x 1 hour periods each day, so no need to keep the water hot for the other 22 hours. Your requirements may differ.

Go do the maths.

One vote against instant hot water here.

Can only relate our personal experiences with instant gas hot water in our previous rented flat. So the problems could have just been with that systems design which would be about 15 years old now.

We found two related problems that made us decide they were not for us.
- Hot water only heated when hot tap near full on. This meant things like, when doing the dishes we had to run the hot water then the cold water as they didn't work together.
- If the water pressure dropped (eg broken mains in the neighborhood) no hot water at all.