Stephanie and I will make a trip this week to see the differences in possible window selections. We hope to to with Kolbe & Kolbe, but will look at the Best Build brand as well.
Tom feels that running gas to the house will be cost prohibitive. As an alternative, we will use electric throughout. Most likely a tankless electric water heater in conjunction with the Geothermal, which looks like a real possibility. One real nice advantage to the Geothermal is the heated pool year around.
Electric tankless hot water heater?? Yikes! I have a gas tankless and I wish I had opted for a different technology. Here's why:
ReplyDelete- the complexity of installation was huge
- the costs of the unit and installation will be hard to recoup
- electic units (in particular) are power hogs, you will be running 240v to that sucker!!
- tankless hot water DOES NOT WORK with front loading, energy saving washers (and other devices). For tankless to work, there has to be a steady flow of hot water - a flow long enough to evacuate the standing (cold) water from the line and then deliver hot water. A lot of these modern appliances deliver hot water in "bursts" and are never on long enough to deliver hot water to the fixture.
If i were to put in a hot water unit today i would consider (a) solar hot water - the least expensive of the solar technologies, (b) one of the new "heat pump" electric water heaters - virtually as effective as a tankless! and/or (c) a whole house boiler that would deliver potable hot water as well as radiant floor heating. One of the nice things about these new "heat pump" hot water heaters, is that they require no flue (since they are electric) and their power demands while running in the "heat pump" mode are very reasonable. If you add solar electric to your roof in the future, your hot water costs would be zero.
As an example: www.rheem.com/products/tank_water_heaters/hpwh/
Good luck with your project! Love the new house sitting next to you!
Rob/Carolyn Walker