Recirculating pump for instant hot water.

LOL!

Wow! I'm sorry, but that's clearly not first world. Or something is wrong with the math. 4 hours of 500W is 2 kWh, or 7.2 million joules. Divide by 4.186 (water specific heat) to get 1.7 million g°C, or 1,700 liter°C. That's around 34 °C for 50 liters. So room temperature to 130°F or about 55°C. Is your hot water room temperature when you finish your shower? That's not a very comfortable shower.

Reminds me of Puerto Rico, where they don't feel a need for hot water. They are happy with tepid water or just room temperature. The water from the street is not cold either, most places. Cold is not a word that is often used.

Yes, just like driving cars and using electric lights is wasteful.

Yep, third world. I like hot showers, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Well, if it starts at 20°C then in 4 hours it goes to 54°C, which is hot enough to burn the skin. If the tank was not fully spent, it goes up to

70°C, which is about the max temp I set.

(room temp typically 20°C)

Wow, garbaging a drill just because a bad cable.

Well, it makes sense if she doesn't know how to repair it herself, and a repair shop is too expensive.

At a beach house the clothes washing machine broke down. The intake valve, I knew. My guests, from the other side of the pond, said never mind, we'll go to a laundry shop for a few days. I said, nah, I'll call the repair man, it is only a valve. I called him, he charged just 35€.

My guests were surprised at how cheap that was. Well, on Madrid it might be 50€ or 75€, they charge only for coming along.

Yes, of course, I could have repaired it myself, but would have taken days, finding the correct valve, and tinkering to open the old machine, and hurting my old back.

I recogn I garbaged an LG TV recently. They asked too much, they said they need to replace the entire power supply module.

I haven't done much electronic repairs since the 90's... My job path didn't go that way. So my few repair skills are too rusty.

I knew of a chap around here who made rich repairing chairs and equipment for disabled people. He is an invalid himself. I believe he now hires repairmen, or rather he works as intermediary between invalids all around the country and the repairmen he knows, arranging the shipments. He knows many invalids, and knows where to find repairmen, I think it is.

I think here, for those houses that are off the water network, the truck demands that they pour the water down, by gravity.

Yes, we should do that here as well. We typically "mind our own business". There are too many houses with pools (when the beach is meters away), or have a well kept grass garden.

I might have seen some documentary.

{chuckle}

Here there was a spree of building golf courses with lots of houses around to sell mostly to British folk.

Tsk, tsk...

:-D

Indeed.

Agricultural production here (Murcia) is high. Lots of sun hours. While water is cheap, it is very profitable. We export veggies up north to Germany and around.

But we are now using more water than we have, and complaining we don't get more water from other regions.

Gosh.

Send the water to the bad water to the sea in trucks :-D

No, not true any longer.

We have instant gas heaters capable of keeping a constant water temperature. It is an electronic control. Yes, the size of the flame can be modulated.

Another method is having a small water tank (say, 5 litres) which circulates with a pump and heats the tap water flow using a heat exchanger. That little reservoir is heated intermittently.

In Spanish, so use google translate:

«In addition, heaters with automatic flame modulation or thermostatic heaters offer energy savings of around 20% because they control the flame output via the gas flow rate to match the heat input to the hot water demand.»

For example, this unit, about 300€:

I can not find at the site a section on electric instant heaters, but I see no problem modulating the electric power with power electronics to produce a fixed temp.

So you live somewhere hot like Puerto Rico, where the water never comes in cold. Still, the math doesn't lie. I don't know why you would want 70°C water. That's dangerously hot. 55°C will give you a first degree burn if you keep your hand under it until you are forced to pull it away. 70°C will give you second degree burns, even if you pull your hand away. Not the best idea.

At least you have electricity. So 2.5 world.

I have a nice skilsaw, because someone cut the cord, rather then fixing it the put it in the trash. Mikek

Oh, I was just thinking that there are cultural differences. Most people here would think "mind your own business" and say nothing, even if some/many bitch in private about a neighbour that wastes water.

There are other plants that keep the lawn green while using little water. Not all of them allow to walk on it, though.

Oh! I didn't know that difference in meaning for garden.

Heh.

(around here, diesel is found on every station)

Yep, but it is not only the golf course itself. It is a whole residential complex. The course, one hotel or more (different luxury levels), individual houses (probably sharing a wall), apartments, shops, restaurants, bars, discos, a Telco (to provide British TV programming to them),... lots of things, huge investments. And lots of grass, apparently the British love to see green even if this is almost the desert.

Dunno what they do now, after Brexit.

Yep.

heh.

We are going in that direction everywhere. :-(

...

I was thinking of that.

Of course.

Because a 50 litres tank at 70°C lasts a longer shower than a tank at

50°C, or two people. That's how it is done here. You simply mix the hot water with cold. Me, I set the tank to a hotter temp in winter than in summer.

Interesting how you judge countries.

So there is not room in your home for a larger tank, so you set the hot water to dangerously hot temperatures to provide longer showers. I seem to recall some comment from you about others being wasteful. Here I thought you were talking about taking shorter showers. But clearly that's not the case.

I'm just listening to what you are describing.

hope you don't have hard water

< snip >

We have solar heated water that can get up to 90°C. The solution is to use a 'tempering valve' which mixes the hot and cold water so that the outlet temperature is 55°C to 60°C

You can install an automatic mixing valve to the tank, or at point of use.

Not sure what a mixing value does. Will it prevent overly hot water from coming out the faucet? The ones I've seen have a setting, which can be set to very hot. If someone doesn't remember to turn it back, you get scalded.

There are many cases of children and people who are otherwise infirm being scalded by overly hot water. That's why, in the US, it is recommended that the hot water tank be set no higher than 130°F (55°C). That's a temperature that gives you time to prevent scalding.

The only reason to set a higher temperature in a home hot water heater, is to allow the hot water to last longer. But the same thing can be done with a larger tank, at a lower temperature. A lower temperature saves on heat losses too.

I was thinking of this one:

Or similar.

...

Yep.

RM? Where? :-?

We do.

I have not heard of any one being scalded here. Maybe we are just smarter :-)

Oh, we also have smart mixing taps.

And smart flash gas heaters that provide a constant temperature flow, on demand.

Of course that here houses are smaller. Your country is empty, land is cheap. And our tanks are put near the ceiling: try to do that with a heavy tank.