If you’ve read our blog before, you know that we have had some ups and downs with our tankless water heater. You can read about our noise problems in this post, and our joy in receiving a replacement unit from Bosch here. The long and short of the story is that I rebuilt the supply gas line twice, trying to resolve a problem that turned out to be a defective gas valve in the heater. Given the massive number of comments we received on those posts and the numerous questions I’ve gotten from friends, I’ve been wanting to put together a new post that shares our opinion on the pros and cons of tankless water heaters. Also, I’m going to share our overcomplicated but effective plumbing layout. First, I’ll start with a picture of our Bosch 635ES (aka 250SX) in all its glory:

Tankless Heaters - why use them?

I think most are familiar with tankless heaters, but just in case you’re not, I’ll touch on this topic. There are several reasons to consider using a tankless heater:

• Energy conservation - since a tankless heater heats water only when needed, they use less energy than tank heaters. Although tank heater insulation has gotten much better over the years, a heater that doesn’t have any standby heat losses will always be more efficient. Also, I would argue that since a tankless can be set at a lower temperature (since you don’t have to jack up the temp as you might with a tank in order to extend your supply), there will be slightly less heat lost through your pipes and insulation to the surrounding air due to the lower temperature differential. Our heater is set at 110° vs the 120-240° most people set for the tank heaters.
• Endless hot water - as long as your tankless is large enough to meet your needs, it can supply infinite hot water. This is great when you’ve got visitors staying at your house, and the fifth shower is the same temp as the first.
• Smaller footprint - being able to hang the heater on the wall saves a lot of floor space. Ours sits above our washing machine, so it’s not taking up any valuable space.
• Direct venting - many of the gas tankless heaters support direct venting out the side of the house. This was a big plus for us, since we were removing our old chimney to gain extra space in our kitchen. An electric tankless wouldn’t require any venting at all, but I’ve not read too many good things about them.
• Longetivity - since tankless heaters are mostly made of copper tubing, as opposed to steel tanks, they will not rust through and should outlast tank heaters by a wide margin.

Why not use a tankless?

Although opinions will differ widely on this topic, you probably already know if you are a tankless person or not. Some people, like us, get so committed to the idea that we kept at it until we had a system that worked for us. Others don’t want any hassle or to spend more money than they have to, so I wouldn’t recommend them if that describes you. I often compare them to hybrid cars.  You buy one because you want to use the least amount of energy possible, not because you think you may even out the extra cost with lower gas usage.  While the payback of a tankless really isn’t all that bad once you factor in rebates and tax credits (see below), I think the inconveniences would scare off someone who wasn’t really motivated to save energy just for the principle of doing it.  And don’t think that there weren’t many times during our troubles that I came very close to ripping ours out and plunking down a big ‘ol tank. There were moments where I didn’t care how much we had invested in it…it just wasn’t worth it. Imagine how I felt after upgrading to 1 1/4″ gas line because our gas run was a tiny bit longer than Bosch recommended for 1″ line (to which I had upgraded from 3/4″), only to find that we still had noise problems, since the unit was defective. I don’t believe that our situation was the norm, though, so please don’t take our initial bad experience as a deterrent. However, there are a few tankless traits that make them not suitable for everyone or their homes:

• Intermittent/low-flow issues - this is my least favorite trait of tankless heaters. While they excel at providing unlimited showers, they pretty much suck at the little stuff, like washing hands and doing dishes. Imagine someone washing their hands in the bathroom when the water in the pipe is totally cold. It may take 1 or 2 extra seconds for the hot water to reach the sink (compared to a tank), since the heater has to kick on once it senses the flow, but that person will not even know that you have a tankless heater. But now imagine that a second person goes in to wash their hands. At first things will be fine, because the line is already full of hot water from the previous use. But there will be some cold water introduced into the line due to the startup delay, and if they wash long enough that cold blast will make it to the sink. And that will be followed a couple of seconds later by the “new” hot water. And all tankless heaters need a minimum flow rate to even turn on, so too low of a low will always come out cold. We learned new behaviors, such as filling a sink for dishwashing or shaving, instead of using little bits at a time. But eventually we got tired of having to think so much about “gaming” the system that we eventually added a mini-tank heater under the kitchen sink. That worked out so great that we installed another one to serve the bathrooms a year later. You can read about our hybrid system below.
• Gas line size - if your gas line (from the meter to your heater) is too small, the heater will not be able to run at full output. If you don’t meet the manufacturer’s recommendations, you may have to upgrade at least part of your line. That’s not a big deal if you can do it yourself, but imagine it could get pretty spendy if you’re paying a plumber. Our unit is one of the higher capacity units, and its 160,000 BTU capacity dwarfs the 80,000 BTUs of our furnace. A tank heater doesn’t really care about the gas supply, since it’s heating a large amount of water at a slower rate. Of course, that’s also why they run low on hot water after a shower or two has depleted the tank.  They just can’t recover quickly enough to keep up with lots of showers.
• Expense - there’s no escaping the fact that tankless heaters cost 2-3x as much as tank models, but there are many federal and state tax credits and rebates available to help offset the cost. The direct vent models also usually require some fairly expensive stainless pipe, which can add $100-200.

Our funky but effective hybrid system

As mentioned above, we eventually grew dissatisfied with having to always out-think the heater when it came to lower flow or intermittent uses. Eventually, we added in two mini-tank heaters to solve this issue, as well as minimize water wastage, since we now have true “instant” hot water at most of our sinks. Although they are reducing the efficiency of our hot water system somewhat, they seem very well insulated. It does mean that some of our heating now comes from electricity, which costs more than gas, but it is definitely nice to waste less water. And if you’re curious about the energy usage, I used my Kill-a-Watt meter to average out their consumption. The 4 gallon heater uses 25 watts, and the 6 gallon uses 37. These are averaged out over several days, so they suck this energy down around the clock. Although it might be slightly more or less depending on your usage, in our case it’s like having a 60 watt bulb running 24/7. I’d rather not be doing that, but some amount of that is offset by water that does not have to be heated by the tankless anymore. And just as important, we don’t ever have to run more water through a faucet than we actually need, since we don’t have to get enough flow to force the big heater to activate.

We have a 4 gallon Ariston under the kitchen sink and a 6 gallon in the basement that feeds the basement bathroom sink, the main bathroom sink just above as well as Chloe’s sink upstairs. It will also feed our (future) bar sink in the basement.  In retrospect, we might have used a 6 gallon for the kitchen sink, because it does sometimes run out if we have to handwash a bunch of pans while running the dishwasher. But even when it does, it’s inline with the tankless heater just below, so it’s easy to “recharge” it quickly. Here are pictures of the heaters, as well as a diagram of our expensive and overcomplicated, yet effective hot water system. This is not for the faint of heart or cheap or wallet, and while we are very happy with it now, I can’t honestly say whether we would have gone this route knowing what all lay ahead.

Since the holidays are just around the corner, we thought we’d post a little public service announcement about Christmas tree lights and lead dust.

Take a peek at your holiday light strings and you may notice that some of them feature lead warning labels. The plastic coating on holiday light wires is typically made of PVC, and PVC often contains lead. There are actually some practical reasons for this. For example, lead provides the plastic with flexibility, and flexible plastic is less likely to crack. Cracked plastic can expose the wires beneath, and exposed wires can potentially lead to fires. Lead can also help the plastic coating retain that Christmas-tree-green color, and that makes the cords less visible as they hang on your tree. Unfortunately, the lead doesn’t necessarily remain in the plastic, so it can be shed as lead dust. (Artificial Christmas trees made of PVC can also shed lead dust, which can land on the presents beneath the tree, just FYI. )

Since lead is known to cause neurological damage, especially in small children and pets, the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC) recommends the following:

• Don’t allow children to play with or handle strings of holiday lights
• Wash your hands thoroughly after hanging your holiday lights
• Avoid holiday lights manufactured in China where lead use in consumer products is not regulated
• Assume that all holiday lights contain lead unless otherwise labeled

California is the only state in U.S. that requires lead warning labels on holiday lights, so lead-containing lights manufactured in other states may not be labeled as such. Also, if you have owned your lights for several years, they may have been manufactured before lead warning labels were required. If you aren’t sure if your holiday lights contain lead, you can always give them a quick swab with a lead test kit, available at most hardware and home improvement stores.

The CHEC Safer Products Store sells a set of holiday lights which, according to the manufacturer, is lead -free except for the cord:

http://checnet.greenhome.com/products/kids/art_supplies/107864/

The great thing about these lights is that they are LED lights, so in addition to containing very little lead, they are extremely energy efficient and should last for about twenty years.

Happy holidays!

Earlier this year, we blogged repeatedly about about our upstairs remodel. Post after post detailed our frantic race to get Chloe’s new bedroom and playroom habitable prior to her little sister’s birth. Then Baby Ginger arrived and we got so distracted that we never mentioned our upstairs again. Pretty inconsiderate of us, huh?

For those of you who have been curious about how it all turned out, below are a few photos of the new playroom. The space isn’t quite finished yet - we have still have some trim work to complete, doors to stain, shelves to install, pictures to hang, etc. But the space is far enough along that Chloe has been able to enjoy it for a couple of months now.

We were able to stay under budget on this project since we pretty much moved everything from Chloe’s old room into this room. The only new additions are the curtains and tablecloth (my first sewing project ever), the big pink beanbag chair (thanks Grandma!) and the new white bookshelf (thanks IKEA!)

We’ll post photos of Chloe’s new bedroom and bathroom soon.

Yesterday I had a local foundation expert come over to check out our basement.  I’ve wanted to get some seismic upgrading done for a long time, but it was becoming painfully obvious that I am never going to have the time to do it myself.  Stephanie has been pushing for us to hire it out, and now I am finally starting to come around on this.  It usually takes about a year from the time she puts an idea in my head until “I get it.”  I have a bad history about being stubborn with things that I can do myself, which explains both why we have been able to afford to do as much as we have and also why it always takes so long to get it done!

You may recall from this post my desire to bolt the house in order to get earthquake insurance.  Over the last year my concerns over a seismic catastrophe have grown, so it’s time that we do something!  While we may or may not see “the big one” during our lifetime, if it happens, our house could be toast.  Read about the Cascadia Subduction Zone to see what I’m talking about.  And since most of our money is tied up in this place, it’d be ugly to end up with a wrecked house AND a mortgage.  Yuck.

The bottom line after talking with the contractor is that we will likely move ahead with just the bolting.   My fantasies have extended all the way to a full foundation replacement or even digging out our crappy crawlspace foundation to create new, reinforced basement space, but the $$ were sobering.  Much more so than I even imagined.  While we never seriously considered a full foundation replacement, I was curious as to what it would cost.  Because of complexities with our lot, such as our “concrete bunker” garage that would have to be demolished and rebuilt to gain access to the foundation, the ballpark floated was between $90-120k!  Ouch!

And some of my other planned upgrades were discouraged by the expert as well.  While I had hoped to install some of the tie-downs (I don’t know the technical name) that extend from the foundation up into the wall cavity to be able to create proper shear walls, he said that I’d just be fooling myself.  The old concrete would not do a good job of holding them in, so it’d hardly be worth the bother and expense.  We are still thinking of adding plywood to the exterior, which would definitely help add to our house’s structure, but the motivation for that is primarily based on our desire to A) insulate the rest of our downstairs and B) swap our our 1960’s-era ranch siding for shingles more appropriate to our bungalow.

So, the bottom line is that we are now planning to go back to our original plan…do only the bolting necessary to qualify for insurance and then sleep easier knowing that we are at least mostly covered.  Even the 80-85% of the repair costs that most earthquake insurance covers is better than 0%, right?  The only downside is that the initial ballpark he threw out was around $5,000.  I know I could do the work myself for under $1,500, but the last year proves that it’ll never happen.  And Stephanie says that any time I spend on the house should be devoted to upstairs, so that we can get Ginger’s room habitable.  She’s right, so I think we’ll be scheduling this soon.  I’m hoping to get at least one more quote, but contractors that do this kind of work are surprisingly hard to find around here.

We’ve been asked on a couple of occasions for the names of our paint colors, and we thought it’d be best to dedicate a post to them. So now if anyone is ever curious about any of our colors, they can just check here. One of the perks/punishments of being married to a designer is our extensive color palette. While, yes, it would be boring to use the same shade of off-white in all your rooms, sometimes I have found myself wondering “do we really need 17 unique colors in every house we’ve ever lived in?” I can barely coordinate two colors, so I’m always amazed at how Stephanie is able to see how all the colors will relate to each other, even before they’re on the wall. My brain doesn’t work that way, so I just don’t get it. I can recall only twice where she wanted to change a color after getting the room painted…and that’s probably out of at least 40 paint jobs (scarily, we’ve lived in 4 different houses in the last 12 years). Anyway, here’s what we’ve got in this one. By the way, I copied much of this from a reply Stephanie left on another post, so if you want more detail, check here.

Foyer: the red looks much richer in real life than it does in the photo. It’s Sherwin Williams Rembrandt Ruby SW0033. This is probably my favorite color in the entire house. The ceiling is Sherwin Williams Hubbard Squash SW0044.

Living room: walls are Miller Paint Green Acre 8144M (Stephanie chose this one to match the green in the shades on our light fixtures - bungalow greens are usually a little more olive-toned.) Ceiling is Sherwin Williams Hubbard Squash SW0044.

Dining room: Walls are a Miller Paint custom mix (recipe: 05M0470,B - 6,C - 2 x 44, F - 3 x 28,W - 5 X 32, P/G). I have no idea what that all means, but supposedly it results in a pretty cool color. Stephanie says that Miller Sunburst 7845D is pretty similar to this. Ceiling is Sherwin Williams Hubbard Squash SW0044.

Kitchen: Walls are Miller Paint Fog Buoy 8574M. Ceiling was “a very custom mix - we mixed some buttery yellow paint we already had with ceiling white to achieve a creamy color that matched the caramel-swirled art glass in our kitchen light fixtures”

Bathroom: Lowe’s Spongebob Squarepants collection Seaweed. Ceiling is just standard “ceiling white” paint.

Upstairs, main room: Sherwin Williams Pekoe Tea 7673M.

Chloe’s room: Not recommended for anyone other than 4 year old girls! Sherwin Williams Impatient Pink 3854. I never knew the name before looking it up just now, and somehow it seems very appropriate for Chloe!

I put in about 5 hours today and was able to get all of the upstairs heating connections finished. All that’s left to do is to connect it to the furnace (luckily, it’s only about 5 feet away from the old chimney chase) and finish insulating everything. Oh, and we have no return duct yet, but I’m not convinced that we’ll even need one. The stairwell should act as a giant return vent, allowing the air to work its way down to the front hall. If things don’t work well, then I’ll add the separate return in later. It took so long, because I foil-taped both the inside and the outside of almost the entire assembly. It may have been overkill, but I hate the idea of air leaking out into the cold attic space!

I really should have run all the ducting before I closed up the chase back in 2005. However, I was too paranoid about tipping off the kitchen inspector to future projects that may or not end up getting permitted. The problem it’s causing me now is that the chase is somewhat snug, and it was a bear feeding ductwork up it. Ironically, while the chase was snug enough that it made my duct insulation bunch up halfway up the shaft, I had the pleasure of watching the entire 10′ of insulation slide off the pipe while I was securing it at top. I was frustrated enough at that point to just say screw it, and I’ll try to come up with some clever way to push it up from the bottom later. Or I’ll just say screw it and let it warm the chase up a bit. If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, the section with the metal strap is a tee that branches 0ff to the right (and then wye’s into flex duct that heads for Chloe and Ginger’s rooms) and continues straight towards the playroom register. The little flex pipe that branches off to the left is for the bathroom.

See if you can follow the math…

Colder weather
+ Large holes in the closet walls (attic access areas)
+ No heat ducts
= Cold upstairs

While the new insulation has made a tremendous difference, not having the furnace connected (yet) to the upstairs was not working out now that we’re into November. It was getting too cold for Chloe to be sleeping up there, so I finally took the first small step back into the remodeling world since Project Ginger. I put in foam insulation and 1/4″ plywood panels to cover all of the attic access holes. I probably went overkill by creating 7 of them, but I do not like inaccessible, or even difficult to access, areas. Some parts of the attic had been sealed up since the house was built in 1911, although maybe ignorance is bliss, since who wants to even know about raccoon poop? So, here’s what they look like now and what lies behind the plywood.  Check back in another five years to see if we’ve even painted them by then!