Present water-heating realities, and future water-heating possibilities

What you'll find on this page: There are ideas out there being developed and implemented that will profoundly affect anybody who uses hot water, and there are people busy having those ideas. This is an effort to acquaint you with them and their ideas.

Most people who visit this site are just average Americans or Canadians with a problem to be solved. It might not occur to them that behind the scenes, there are people actively trying to improve the breed of water heaters. You might call them water-heating elites, but without the pejorative connotation that sometimes goes with "elites" -- that being somebody who is better than the rest of us. Instead, you might think of them as experts in the field who are vitally interested in making water-heating more satisfactory and more efficient for the rest of us.

Some of them are in the water heater manufacturing industry. Others work for utilities. Still others are environmentalists. But this area is outside the realm of politics, even though that tends to tinge everything anyway. People do like to take sides and argue!

These people are trying to make a difference by making better, more efficient products and developing more efficient concepts, and not arguing among themselves, but discussing among themselves. If doing a thing a little differently results in a vastly more efficient system, how can anyone argue against that, be they Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Green?

This section will comprise essays by these people, and links to presentations they've made in other venues. This spring, I attended the Affordable Comfort Summit in San Francisco, and the ACEEE Hot Water Forum in Berkeley, and was exposed to a lot of ideas that I think need broader exposure to the general public. ACEEE stands for American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

I learned a long time ago that even great ideas have to be sold, and that the essence of grass-roots is making people aware of the ideas they should get behind. Otherwise, those ideas will remain in the shadows instead of being implemented, as they should be.

-- Randy Schuyler, June 2011

The Future of Water-Heating: What's Possible? by Larry Weingarten -- A look at where we came from and which ideas from the past have merit here and now, as well as where we might be going. (Affordable Comfort Summit)

Rating and Comparing Water Heaters for Consumers by Harvey Sachs, ACEEE -- Energy Factor, or EF is a far less satisfactory metric than the EPA's mileage estimates for cars. The industry is trying to figure out what to replace it with that will be fair to tank-type heaters, tankless heaters and other devices. (ACEEE Hot Water Forum)

Residential Water Heater Shipment Projections, by Mike Parker, A.O. Smith Corp. -- Tankless and heat-pump heater sales are growing rapidly, but the statistics show they are still a very small part of the total water heater market. (ACEEE Hot Water Forum)

The Most Ignored Residential Appliance, by William Hoover -- Apropos to the sales figures, William Hoover suggests that most people just can't afford more efficient, more expensive water heaters. Both items have major implications for where the country is going and how it's going to get there. (ACEEE Hot Water Forum)

Where Is Hot Water in High-Performance Buildings?, by Gary Klein, Affiliated International Management, LLC -- A key point he makes with this topic is that hot water uses a LOT of energy, so paying attention to how it is generated and delivered, and where waste is created, has giant implications for any effort to cut energy use. (ACEEE Hot Water Forum)

Three Elements Electric Water Heaters by Andre Laperriere, Hydro Quebec -- Often, a big concern for utilities is trying to influence peak demand. If they can level that out, they can serve their customers without having to build more dams, more power plants, more everything. Heat-pump water heaters have limitations. If it's too hot, they shut down. If it's too cold, there isn't any heat to pump into the water and they revert to their backup resistance elements. Then they are no longer twice as efficient. But Hydro Quebec got the idea of trying something different, a three-element electric heater (most have just two elements). (ACEEE Hot Water Forum)

Evaluating a Hot-Water Distribution System, By Gary Klein, Affiliated International Management, LLC -- Gary Klein developed the concept of structured plumbing

Domestic Hot-Water Assessments in Multifamily Buildings, by Andrew Brooks, Association for Energy Affordability, Inc. -- Apartment owners and managers: this presentation is for you

Field Experiences With Heat-Pump Water Heaters, by Chris Gray of Southern Company -- A utility installed about 50 heat-pump water heaters in homes to see what reactions and comments they got from those using them.

High-Efficiency Gas Water Heaters by Jim Lunt of Lunt-Marymor Co. -- The ins and outs of super-efficient gas condensing water heaters.

Energy Star and WaterSense, by Abigail Daken of the Environmental Protection Agency -- Information on these two federal energy efficiency programs.

The Future for All Tankless Water Heaters, by Ron Kraemer of SEISCO -- Electric tankless heaters have applications as heat-boosters for geothermal, solar and other energy sources.

Forget That Hover Car -- Finding a Sustainable Future Through Water and Energy Codes, by Alice La Pierre of the city of Berkeley. Ms. La Pierre explains what Berkeley's ordinances are and why they are in place, while giving us a journey into the past.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Larry Weingarten, presented in July 2011 at the Building Science Water Heater Expert Session, in Boston, MA. It describes the concept of "elegant simplicity" and warns of likely problems that will result as systems become more and more complex.

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