An Improved System for Even Faster Hot Water
I missed an opportunity. You may recall the retrofit I did in 2022 to get faster hot water at three of my fixtures. It made a huge improvement, but it could have been even better. But before I go there,…
hot water
The Plug-in Heat Pump Water Heater Is Here!
The 120-volt plug-in heat pump water heater is here! The effort to bring these things to market began in 2018, and now they're available to buy. This technology has some significant advantages over the standard 240-volt heat pump water heater. …
Can a Water Heater Last More Than 15 Years?
We've been trained to believe something that's just not true. Go out and ask a hundred people how long a water heater can last, and the majority probably will say it's in the range of 10 to 15 years. Where…
Can a Heat Pump Water Heater Replace an Air Conditioner?
The most common type of heat pump water heater takes heat from the air and puts it into water. Of course, that's what all heat pumps do, right? Take heat from one place and put it in another. By removing…
The Top 10 Articles in the Energy Vanguard Blog in 2022
It's been a good year in the Energy Vanguard Blog. Counting this one, I've published 46 articles during the year. Of the previous 45 articles, I think the following might be ten most important ones. This is just my own…
Faster Hot Water Can Change Your Life
We've normalized the abnormal in our homes in so many ways that most people have no idea what kind of performance they should expect. If you've never lived in a house with a good building enclosure and HVAC systems, for…
How I Got Faster Hot Water
In my last post, I told you about the plumbing work I did to begin the retrofit of my hot water distribution system. I'm bypassing the original too-long, too-big copper pipes with shorter, smaller runs of PEX tubing. My goal…
A Weekend Plumbing Adventure
Did you know that some plumbers stuff a wad of white bread (sans crust) into a pipe before they solder it? That's one of the things I learned during my weekend plumbing adventure. More about that later, though. The purpose…
Efficient Hot Water Delivery With a Simple Tool
Gary Klein, a guru of efficient hot water delivery, has been pushing for change in hot water distribution systems for a long time. In recent years, he and his colleagues have developed a great tool for quantifying the efficiency of…