Go green in a day? No way!
Posted at 6:42 AM, May. 31, 2008
I did my normal thing yesterday to start the day. I turned on the shower. Was it my imagination, or was there no hot water? It was NOT my imagination. There was NO hot water.
How than this be, I thought. The water heater is not that old. But then I remembered that it is eleven years old. How time flies!
What are we going to do? I called the gas company who installed it for us originally. Their service man came out and confirmed my suspicion, that the heater is shot. He tells me that it will be a couple of days before they can install a new one, and I tell him to go ahead and order it. We have got to have hot water. I need to have clean hair, look as good as possible for my real estate public! Also, there is a load of dirty, ‘quick rinsed’ dishes in the dishwasher!
Having traveled to India and China recently, I was impressed by their energy efficient ways of heating water. A couple of very efficient ways we found in India, which are not options for me, are -1- have NO hot water in the showers, -2- intermittent hot water, -3- heating water in the teapot and mixing with cold water in a bucket for a bucket bath. That is not what I want. I am a spoiled American and I like hot water.
But we saw one brilliant method of heating water, I thought. A friend’s apartment in India had a water heater in the bathroom, and he pushed the button to turn it on 10 minutes before his shower and he had just enough hot water for the shower. I thought then how nice it would be nice to have small hot water heaters installed at each point of hot water usage in our house.
How would I install such a system in my home? And how quickly? How expensive would it be? Is there even that equipment sold in the Unites States? Truth is, I don’t know. Truth is, I should have been trying to find out several months ago. I knew, somewhere in my subconscious that the water heater was going to go out at some point.
But now I am between a rock and a hard place. I need hot water now. I am going to call the gas company and ask what kind of water heater they ordered, and see how energy efficient it is, and if there are any other options. Maybe that will soothe my conscious a little that I didn’t plan better.
Copyright 2008, Sarah Rummage
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