Have you heard about the Home Depot $25,000 Holiday Gift Card Contest?

Do-it-yourselfers are currently posting videos on You Tube showcasing home improvement projects in dire need of attention. On December 17, a winning entry will be chosen, and Home Depot will award some lucky homeowner with a $25,000 Home Depot Gift Card.

What can we say? We couldn’t resist! So, if you haven’t already submitted an entry of your own, we’d love it if you would click on the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mr6WrO-ADA

View count accounts for 20 percent of the points awarded to each submission, so we really need to get as many people as we can to watch our little video as soon as possible because the contest ends this weekend. If you’re a horror movie fan, you may even get a chuckle from our submission. We can pretty much guarantee that our entry is one of a kind.

Thanks in advance for watching!

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.

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.

This is pretty big on my “wish list,” but unfortunately keeps slipping down my “to do” list.  Although Portland is not as prone to severe earthquakes as parts of California, we do get them, and there is a known pattern of a catastrophic quake every 300 to 500 years in region.  Since our house is almost 100 years old, it was not built with any kind of earthquake engineering know-how.  Old houses with the mudsill just resting on the foundation are very susceptible to sliding off during a major quake.  Six months ago I got all worked up earthquakes, and we decided to just go ahead and hire someone to attach our house to the foundation.  Well, that is easier said than done, because I found that very few contractors specialize in this.  I had a very unsatisfying experience calling the one “seismic specialist” I could find (the call basically ended with us hanging up on each other - he was extremely rude).  By that time I had done enough research on the Internet that I was convinced that I could just do it myself, if necessary.  The only flaw with this plan is that it’s going to be awhile before I can get the job done.  We agreed to finish the upstairs first, although that would be quite an irony if our entire house collapsed in the meantime!

Once I get it bolted, I found that the insurance Continue Reading »

Over the last two years, we have progressively developed one of the most complicated water heating systems in the world. At least it feels that way. I have written previously about our problems with our defective tankless water heater and its recent resolution. As much as we love our tankless heater, there is no avoiding the fact that they pretty much suck when it comes to the little stuff (i.e. handwashing and dishwashing). They require a minimum flow rate to kick on and a sustained flow to stay on. If you aren’t using a constant stream, as with a shower or filling a washing machine, you will end up with a pattern of hot/cold/hot/cold/hot water in your pipe. While this is tolerable for washing your hands, it can be a real shock when you’re trying to shave.

Because we don’t like the idea of wasting a ton of water Continue Reading »

The loved/hated trip to Home Depot guaranteed a late start and a shorter workday today. However, some progress was made, so I’m feeling pretty good about things. Plumbing is usually one of my slower “skills,” so it’s great when it doesn’t fight me too much.

Holes cut in flooring for supply/drain pipes for upstairs. These will get boxed in once it’s all done. Or, more likely, in the week before we put the house on the market. And no, we have no plans to do so, but how high of a priority will this be when other parts of our house are still inhabitable? I didn’t get the drain pipe all the way up to this point today, but it’ll eventually work its way towards the upstairs through this hole, along with the supply lines.

In the basement, I took out the sink, which has to be moved due to being directly in the path of where I had to run the 3″ drain for the new upstairs bath. I removed the cleanout assembly that I had put in two years ago and replaced it with a 45°fitting to allow me to connect the new drain line to the main stack. I use pieces of leftover wire to help me hold the pipes in place as I install them. I always find this to be the trickiest part…trying to get everything cut, glued and installed with the proper slope. I have to add a disclaimer that all the sloppy wiring visible in this picture was not done by me! It was a gift from the previous owner. When we eventually get around to redoing this bath, it’ll all get cleaned up!

We removed the chimney to create space for a bigger pantry closet and a chase for heat ducts to the upstairs.  This was possible to do, because our new furnace and tankless water heater duct directly out the side of the house, making the chimney obsolete.  Our friend James pitched in once again to help take us take it down.  He worked like crazy with the cold chisel and sledgehammer, while Julio carted the bricks out to the backyard.  They were able to get the whole thing down in only 2 hours.  The old mortar helped a lot, as there wasn’t much holding the bricks together.