And yes, that's Wyatt the hound howling outside in the background!
]]>Our house, which was built in 1992 when oil was $1 a gallon, originally used an oil burner to run both the radiant floor heat, and the domestic hot water tank. As best I can tell, the same "hot loop" went through both the three zones of the floor heating system and the holding tank.
As a result, we had to set the oil burner to a very high temperature (160° - 180°) in the winter in order to have enough domestic hot water and run the floor heat at the same time. This temperature is most likely higher than the floor heat should have been set, and it still was only good for one and a half showers in the morning!
After living with this for a few years, we did some research and decided to have a tankless water heater installed. Leon Clayberger came to our house, gave us a presentation, and did some water testing to ensure that our water supply was pure enough to not clog the internals of the unit.
Leon did a great job installing the Rinnai R75LSi, and the total cost of the labor and install was $2,375. In addition, we received a $200 rebate from Pennsylvania, and a federal tax credit of 30% (up to $1500) which came to $712.50. If I recall correctly, the full tank of propane and the "set fee" was around $400.
When you turn on the hot water, the tankless ("on demand") heater pulls cold water in and heats it to the temperature that we set on a thermostat in our living room. The downside is that it takes awhile (up to a minute at the far end of the house) to really come up to temperature. We don't often experience the "cold water sandwich" effect because we have his and hers showers, and we let the hot water run in some cases where we'd turn it off and on.
On the positive side, once it gets there, it stays there for as long as you need it. Last fall, we had a houseful of guests, and ran showers for nine people all morning long without any issues! And, we can set it low for Eddie's bath, medium for Kristen's shower, and high for mine.
It's tough to determine the exact cost of the oil used to heat the domestic hot water (as opposed to the radiant floor heat) because the same oil burner powers both. However, my best approximation is to take the periods where we filled the tank at the end of the winter (February/March) and topped off again in the fall.
During the summer months, when the floor heat is turned off, we usually used around 1.1 - 1.2 gallons of oil per day, which at $3+ a gallon came to $100 a month to heat the domestic hot water. Ouch!
Fortunately, the propane costs are much more clear cut! The tank was installed on 7/23/2010, and we just received a bill from our supplier for our most recent fill-up. The breakdown is as follows:
| Date | Gallons | Total Price | Gallons Per Day | Days | Dollars/Gallon | Dollars/Day | Dollars/Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/22/2010 | 23 | $67.60 | 0.38 | 61 | $2.94 | $1.11 | $33.80 |
| 12/6/2010 | 42.3 | $127.74 | 0.56 | 75 | $3.02 | $1.70 | $51.95 |
| 3/1/2011 | 49.6 | $163.72 | 0.58 | 85 | $3.30 | $1.93 | $58.75 |
| 6/30/2011 | 43.9 | $150.93 | 0.36 | 121 | $3.44 | $1.25 | $38.04 |
So, we're averaging around $46 a month for propane to run the tankless water heater, which is a huge improvement over the $100 a month that our inefficient oil system was using!
If we assume a savings of $54 per month, that's around 44 months, or just shy of four years, for the savings to pay for the cost of the new water heater.
If we factor in the state rebate and federal tax credit (although tax credit math may not be that simple) it may be as low as 27 months, or 2.3 years.
The numbers I can find for the costs of an gas or electric hot water tank ($30 - $40 a month) are fairly comparable to the monthly costs that we're seeing for our tankless.
Had we started with a standard hot water tank, we might not have taken the jump to a tankless. A Consumer Reports article from 2008 titled "Are tankless water heaters a worthwhile investment?" supports this conclusion. The potential for increases in electricity prices may change this balance in the future!
However, given our initial situation with the inefficient oil heating system, and the luxury of always having enough hot water, it was a no-brainer to go with the tankless!
]]>We accidentally (well, probably me!) taught Eddie how to make fart noises. Now he can be a classy little boy!
Eddie's new swing is a hand-me-down from Todd or I. We have it hanging from the clothesline pole, and he loves it! The game here is "kick Grandpa in the belly!"
]]>Eddie playing with the laundry basket. A laundry basket on Daddy's head makes it so much more fun!
Eddie IN the laundry basket. You spin me right round, baby. Right round like a record, baby...
]]>From plone.org:
Plone 4 is focused on improving the speed, manageability and appearance of Plone while upgrading the underlying infrastructure in preparation for Plone 5. This version includes significant performance improvements, a new theme, search and indexing improvements, group dashboards, reduced memory footprint, improved handling of large files & media, faster folder implementation, better management of users and groups, dynamic forms using jQuery tools, and an improved first-run and upgrade experience.
Overall, the upgrade was pretty straightforward. It definitely helped that I'm in the process of doing the same thing at work, and that my site is far simpler with fewer customizations. The most time consuming part was probably tweaking the navigation CSS. And, the DVD Library product actually came across with minimal changes. I even was able to make some needed updates to the photo gallery product, which I'll get committed to SVN on Monday.
I'll be interested to see how the plone.app.caching product works. It's much simpler than CacheFu, but I'm wondering if it will be sufficient for the high traffic AgSci sites.
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Pepper's very curious, but doesn't know what to make of Eddie's squeaking.
Wyatt is showing lots of the doggy anxiety signs while watching HIS baby getting changed.
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Kristen's water broke at 6am on 6/20, and we got to the hospital around 8:00am. Labor went slow at first, but some walking around got things going. Contractions were steady, but nothing was really happening, so Kristen got some Pitocin to help speed things along around 8pm, and things started happening faster. Kristen was cursing me until around 9:40pm, when she was completely dilated, and could start pushing. She popped him out at 10:46pm after an hour of pushing.
I'm really proud of Kristen, since she made it through the whole thing without any pain medication or epidurals. She's still not sure if she's happy about that, but we'll see.
More pictures to follow, but we have to go do baby stuff now. Edward is as stretchy now that he's on the outside as he was on the inside!
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We think the two spotted snakes were corn snakes, and the striped ones were garter snakes. Overall, we probably saw at least eight snakes sunning themselves on our rocks. It wasn't particularly sunny today, but they were catching some rays anyway!
This was the first video from our Flip Video camera that I played with in iMovie.