Quite often I am asked if it is safe to drink water that has passed through the water heater. My staunch opinion is that it is safe. Why do I think it is ok to drink hot water from the water heater? Well, there are a number of reasons.
The water coming in from the water main or well enters the water heater and is then heated. Hot water is less capable of holding on to the dissolved minerals common in water, so some of the minerals, primarily calcium and magnesium, come out of solution and settle at the bottom of the tank. This is the sediment that accumulates in the water heater.
Calcium and magnesium are both minerals that human bodies need and in no way are harmful to drink. In fact, many in the medical field believe that drinking hard water is beneficial and can improve people’s health. Some studies have shown a lower rate of cardiovascular problems in areas where people have hard water. You can go to your local drug store or supermarket and buy calcium and magnesium supplements.
Since some of the calcium and magnesium settle out of the water heater the hot water reaching your fixtures has a lower mineral content than the cold water, and there is absolutely nothing dangerous about drinking water with a low mineral content.
From Wilkes University's Website:
"Hard water is not a health hazard. In fact, the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences) states that hard drinking water generally contributes a small amount toward total calcium and magnesium human dietary needs. They further state that in some instances, where dissolved calcium and magnesium are very high, water could be a major contributor of calcium and magnesium to the diet."
Researchers have studied water hardness and cardiovascular disease mortality. Such studies have been "epidemiological studies," which are statistical relationship studies.
While some studies suggest a correlation between hard water and lower cardiovascular disease mortality, other studies do not suggest a correlation. The National Research Council states that results at this time are inconclusive and recommends that further studies should be conducted.
The fear about drinking hot water from the heater probably comes from the fact that hot water is better at leaching compounds out of piping and plumbing fixture materials. Hot water for instance will leach more lead out of the brass fittings and the solder joints that join the copper pipes than cold water will.
In the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act as amended in 1996 (USEPA, 2000), Congress explicitly banned new devices containing pure lead pipe, leaded solders, and brass with more than 8 percent lead content.
Water heaters typically have steel tanks that are lined with glass or epoxy or other materials that prevent the tank from rusting. There are no harmful compounds that can be leached from the lining material, so no problem there. There isn’t any lead in the steel tank either.
So what it boils down to… pun intended… is the piping between the water heater and the fixture. If you have for instance, lead pipes between the water heater and the faucets, don’t drink the hot water since it will leach more lead out of the pipe material than cold water would. However, if you do have lead pipes, which is highly unlikely, you should not drink the cold water either. Get bottled water.
If drinking water from the water heater did pose a health risk the government regulatory agencies like the NSF or FDA would let us know.
Just my two cents.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Solar Water Heaters Save Energy, Make Them Save Water Too!
Obviously solar water heaters do save energy. Or at least they don’t use energy that you have to pay for. It’s free from the sun. But what about saving water? Saving water is becoming more and more important and will continue to become even more important in the future.
We already have to desalinate sea water in many parts of the world and even in the U.S. to provide the ever increasing amount of water required for our growing populations. Wells are going dry, glaciers are disappearing and clean potable water is becoming ever scarcer.
Most homes waste a lot of hot water. Whenever you run water down the tap waiting for your hot water to arrive at the fixture you are wasting water. Not only that, but your wasting energy and increasing your carbon foot print at the same time by virtue of running water into the sewer system which then has to treat it. Treating sewage consumes energy and contributes to greenhouse gas releases.
Long hot water pipes are the bad guy here. If the water heater was right next to the fixture there would be little if any wasted water. This is difficult with a solar water heater. The longer the pipes the worse the problem.
There is a simple solution to the problem… a hot water demand system. A hot water demand system is a pumping system that pumps the hot water out of your water heater and to your fixtures whenever you demand hot water. It does this without running water down the drain. Your hot water arrives more quickly saving you time, and nothing gets run down the drain saving you a lot of water and reducing your carbon footprint.
Hot water demand systems are inexpensive and do not require any additional plumbing. A small pump install under your fixture at the furthest fixture from the water heater. Some models can be installed using just supply hoses so you don’t even have to turn of the water to your house, just turn off the supply valves under the sink to do the installation. You do need an electrical outlet installed if there isn’t already one there.
The water savings from a home equipped with a hot water demand system ranges from about 10,000 gallons per year to as much as 16,000 gallons per year for a family of four. Last time I checked there were about 55 million single family homes in the US. So if we just look at single family homes and not at things like condos and apartments, and we assume a savings of 10,000 gallons per year, it would total a staggering Five hundred and fifty billion (550,000,000,000) gallons of water per year.
Demand systems after all, don’t have to be restricted to solar water heaters, they work with any kind of water heater. The demand systems are directed at the hot water distribution piping, and the kind of water heater being used doesn’t make any difference.
Whether you have a solar water heater, tankless water heater, electric water heater or any other kind a hot water demand system will save you time water and money. Turn your solar hot water heater green, and reduce your carbon footprint.
Every time you use your hot water you will feel good about not wasting all the water!
We already have to desalinate sea water in many parts of the world and even in the U.S. to provide the ever increasing amount of water required for our growing populations. Wells are going dry, glaciers are disappearing and clean potable water is becoming ever scarcer.
Most homes waste a lot of hot water. Whenever you run water down the tap waiting for your hot water to arrive at the fixture you are wasting water. Not only that, but your wasting energy and increasing your carbon foot print at the same time by virtue of running water into the sewer system which then has to treat it. Treating sewage consumes energy and contributes to greenhouse gas releases.
Long hot water pipes are the bad guy here. If the water heater was right next to the fixture there would be little if any wasted water. This is difficult with a solar water heater. The longer the pipes the worse the problem.
There is a simple solution to the problem… a hot water demand system. A hot water demand system is a pumping system that pumps the hot water out of your water heater and to your fixtures whenever you demand hot water. It does this without running water down the drain. Your hot water arrives more quickly saving you time, and nothing gets run down the drain saving you a lot of water and reducing your carbon footprint.
Hot water demand systems are inexpensive and do not require any additional plumbing. A small pump install under your fixture at the furthest fixture from the water heater. Some models can be installed using just supply hoses so you don’t even have to turn of the water to your house, just turn off the supply valves under the sink to do the installation. You do need an electrical outlet installed if there isn’t already one there.
The water savings from a home equipped with a hot water demand system ranges from about 10,000 gallons per year to as much as 16,000 gallons per year for a family of four. Last time I checked there were about 55 million single family homes in the US. So if we just look at single family homes and not at things like condos and apartments, and we assume a savings of 10,000 gallons per year, it would total a staggering Five hundred and fifty billion (550,000,000,000) gallons of water per year.
Demand systems after all, don’t have to be restricted to solar water heaters, they work with any kind of water heater. The demand systems are directed at the hot water distribution piping, and the kind of water heater being used doesn’t make any difference.
Whether you have a solar water heater, tankless water heater, electric water heater or any other kind a hot water demand system will save you time water and money. Turn your solar hot water heater green, and reduce your carbon footprint.
Every time you use your hot water you will feel good about not wasting all the water!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
How Much Hot Water Are You Wasting? How To Find Out and Fix It!
Residential hot water conservation is one of the last frontiers of available water conservation. Most homes waste tremendous amounts of water with their existing hot water plumbing. Every time you have to wait for hot water you are needlessly running water down the drain.
Most water conservation measures in the home are flow limiting or volume limiting devices and or appliances. Low flow fixtures reduce the flow and thus can reduce water wastage if the home owner would otherwise leave the water on at a high flow rate. It doesn’t save you any water if you are just filling a pot or a glass, it just takes you longer.
Low flow fixtures can actually cause you to waste more energy. As the hot water travels from the water heater to the fixture is loses some of its heat to the cold piping material, causing the hot water to warm up more gradually at the fixture. With very long pipe runs this effect is very evident.
For long pipe runs the low flow fixtures result in more barely-warm water from the hot water plumbing to be run down the drain. That means you are running heat energy down the drain too. That is wasting energy and costing you money.
Many folks who have slow hot water problems turn the faucet or shower on and go do something else while they wait, coming back a few minutes later to use the hot water. Often when they get back the water being run down the drain is hot water. It’s like running Btu’s down the drain, not to mention all that extra water being wasted.
In large homes where long hot water runs are more likely and hard to avoid, often a hot water circulating system is used. A hot water circulating system continuously circulates hot water through the hot water piping, keeping instant hot water always available at the hot water faucets.
This saves a lot of water and is a nice convenience, but it is a huge waster of energy. Your hot water piping is in effect, a large radiator. Even with heavy insulation you will be using a lot of heating energy to run such a system. You are also running a pump which also consumes a modest amount of energy.
A number of products are on the market to remedy this situation. One common system is what I call the luke-warm hot water circulating system. It is similar to the standard hot water circulating system, except the pump is controlled by the water temperature at the fixture. In some systems the pump is located under the sink and some locate the pump at the water heater with just a valve at the sink. There are also pumpless systems that rely on thermo siphon effects to operate.
I personally can’t understand why anyone would want one of these warm water circulating systems. They are virtually the same as the old full time circulating systems except instead of running continuously they run for a short time periodically all day. These systems monitor the water temperature at the fixture, and when the temperature drops to a pres-set temperature, usually around 85 degrees, the pump comes on and pumps until the water temperature reaches say 95 degrees and then shuts off. At the moment the pump shuts off you have 95 degree water available, not exactly hot, but not cold. The hot water will be probably be only a few seconds behind it.
The water will begin cooling down immediately and so after about 10 or 20 minutes the temperature of the water will drop below the lower set point, and the pump will again turn on and run until the warmer water arrives and it shuts off. Now all the 85 degree water that was in the hot water pipes is in the cold water line. If you want a drink of cold water you will have to purge the warm water out of the line. This will waste water.
If you happen to turn on the hot water faucet when the hot water has cooled down almost to the set point but not quite, your hot water will actually feel cool to the touch… and you will have to run luke warm water down the drain until the hot water arrives. Now you are wasting energy and water at the same time.
The thermo siphon systems lose energy in the same way. These systems require the water heater be below the fixture, relying on the principle that hot water rises, and thus don’t need a pump. They still waste the heat energy which is much larger than the pumping energy anyway.
You can put such a system on a timer to reduce the energy consumption, by not running it during time you normally don’t use hot water. During those times however, you won’t have the benefits either.
Most of these types of systems are incompatible with tankless water heaters. They don’t produce a high enough flow to turn on the heater.
These luke-warm hot water recirculation systems are available from Grundfos, Taco Pump Company, RedyTemp, Watts, Armstrong, and others.
There is however a better way. It’s called a hot water demand system and it eliminates the wasted water completely, eliminates the wasted energy, uses less than $2.00 a year in pumping energy, and doesn’t need any special plumbing or a dedicated return line. This makes it very easy to retro-fit into existing homes.
The hot water demand system typically locates the pump at the fixture furthest from the water heater and will thus may service other fixtures along the way. To activate the system you push a button which starts the pump. The pump then speeds the water from the water heater to your fixture, returning the cooled off hot water to the inlet of the water heater through the existing cold water piping. When hot water arrives the pump shuts off preventing warm water from entering the cold water line.
Now when you turn on the tap you have instant hot water. Since the pipe had to get filled with hot water anyway, you don’t waste any extra energy, in fact, you often get your hot water much more quickly and thus you actually save a little energy. Because the pump only runs for a few seconds and only when you demand hot water, it consumes very little electricity; typically for a family of four it would be less than $2.00 per year.
Most demand hot water systems produce enough flow to turn on a tankless water heater. Demand systems are especially nice with tankless hot water heaters since tankless units require longer to deliver hot water and thus waste more hot water than storage tank type hot water systems.
By installing a hot water demand system you will be going green with your hot water plumbing. You will be reducing not only the amount of wasted water and energy, but you will be reducing your carbon footprint and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The best part is you will feel good every time you use your hot water.
Most water conservation measures in the home are flow limiting or volume limiting devices and or appliances. Low flow fixtures reduce the flow and thus can reduce water wastage if the home owner would otherwise leave the water on at a high flow rate. It doesn’t save you any water if you are just filling a pot or a glass, it just takes you longer.
Low flow fixtures can actually cause you to waste more energy. As the hot water travels from the water heater to the fixture is loses some of its heat to the cold piping material, causing the hot water to warm up more gradually at the fixture. With very long pipe runs this effect is very evident.
For long pipe runs the low flow fixtures result in more barely-warm water from the hot water plumbing to be run down the drain. That means you are running heat energy down the drain too. That is wasting energy and costing you money.
Many folks who have slow hot water problems turn the faucet or shower on and go do something else while they wait, coming back a few minutes later to use the hot water. Often when they get back the water being run down the drain is hot water. It’s like running Btu’s down the drain, not to mention all that extra water being wasted.
In large homes where long hot water runs are more likely and hard to avoid, often a hot water circulating system is used. A hot water circulating system continuously circulates hot water through the hot water piping, keeping instant hot water always available at the hot water faucets.
This saves a lot of water and is a nice convenience, but it is a huge waster of energy. Your hot water piping is in effect, a large radiator. Even with heavy insulation you will be using a lot of heating energy to run such a system. You are also running a pump which also consumes a modest amount of energy.
A number of products are on the market to remedy this situation. One common system is what I call the luke-warm hot water circulating system. It is similar to the standard hot water circulating system, except the pump is controlled by the water temperature at the fixture. In some systems the pump is located under the sink and some locate the pump at the water heater with just a valve at the sink. There are also pumpless systems that rely on thermo siphon effects to operate.
I personally can’t understand why anyone would want one of these warm water circulating systems. They are virtually the same as the old full time circulating systems except instead of running continuously they run for a short time periodically all day. These systems monitor the water temperature at the fixture, and when the temperature drops to a pres-set temperature, usually around 85 degrees, the pump comes on and pumps until the water temperature reaches say 95 degrees and then shuts off. At the moment the pump shuts off you have 95 degree water available, not exactly hot, but not cold. The hot water will be probably be only a few seconds behind it.
The water will begin cooling down immediately and so after about 10 or 20 minutes the temperature of the water will drop below the lower set point, and the pump will again turn on and run until the warmer water arrives and it shuts off. Now all the 85 degree water that was in the hot water pipes is in the cold water line. If you want a drink of cold water you will have to purge the warm water out of the line. This will waste water.
If you happen to turn on the hot water faucet when the hot water has cooled down almost to the set point but not quite, your hot water will actually feel cool to the touch… and you will have to run luke warm water down the drain until the hot water arrives. Now you are wasting energy and water at the same time.
The thermo siphon systems lose energy in the same way. These systems require the water heater be below the fixture, relying on the principle that hot water rises, and thus don’t need a pump. They still waste the heat energy which is much larger than the pumping energy anyway.
You can put such a system on a timer to reduce the energy consumption, by not running it during time you normally don’t use hot water. During those times however, you won’t have the benefits either.
Most of these types of systems are incompatible with tankless water heaters. They don’t produce a high enough flow to turn on the heater.
These luke-warm hot water recirculation systems are available from Grundfos, Taco Pump Company, RedyTemp, Watts, Armstrong, and others.
There is however a better way. It’s called a hot water demand system and it eliminates the wasted water completely, eliminates the wasted energy, uses less than $2.00 a year in pumping energy, and doesn’t need any special plumbing or a dedicated return line. This makes it very easy to retro-fit into existing homes.
The hot water demand system typically locates the pump at the fixture furthest from the water heater and will thus may service other fixtures along the way. To activate the system you push a button which starts the pump. The pump then speeds the water from the water heater to your fixture, returning the cooled off hot water to the inlet of the water heater through the existing cold water piping. When hot water arrives the pump shuts off preventing warm water from entering the cold water line.
Now when you turn on the tap you have instant hot water. Since the pipe had to get filled with hot water anyway, you don’t waste any extra energy, in fact, you often get your hot water much more quickly and thus you actually save a little energy. Because the pump only runs for a few seconds and only when you demand hot water, it consumes very little electricity; typically for a family of four it would be less than $2.00 per year.
Most demand hot water systems produce enough flow to turn on a tankless water heater. Demand systems are especially nice with tankless hot water heaters since tankless units require longer to deliver hot water and thus waste more hot water than storage tank type hot water systems.
By installing a hot water demand system you will be going green with your hot water plumbing. You will be reducing not only the amount of wasted water and energy, but you will be reducing your carbon footprint and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The best part is you will feel good every time you use your hot water.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
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