Marketing for Realtors

When I first heard of "tankless" water heaters my first reaction was "too good to be true". What a tankless system claims to do is cut your energy costs. It does this by eliminating the tank and therefore the necessity to keep reheating the water in the tank because of inevitable heat loss. No tank, no heat loss, no wasted energy.

Sounds good, but like I said, almost too good to be true.

Nevertheless the tankless idea has a certain appeal. Like most homeowners I am interested in anything that might save money. But maybe even more important, the tankless water heater has a certain "gadget appeal". Most guys are impressed with gadgets and I am no exception. The gadget in this case is the heating unit that can actually pull off this miracle. You send cold water in one end, and out the other end comes hot water. Now that's a gadget worth considering.

Whether or not this particular gadget actually works, you have to admit that the big old water tank heater is completely lacking in gadget appeal. These things have been around for, what, 50, 75, 100 years, and are basically the same as when you first saw one. They're not really the kind of thing you brag about to your buddies - "Hey come on down and have a look at my new 75 gallon water heater..."

So that in itself is a good reason to consider installing a new whiz bang high tech tankless heater.

But do tankless water heaters actually deliver what they claim? Can they actually provide enough hot water for your requirements? Will they use less energy? Will you save money over the medium or long term? Or is this just another one of those green technologies that costs more than it's worth.

Tankless water heaters have a couple of advantages. They may save you money in the long run because they actually do use less energy than traditional heaters. They also have a smaller physical "footprint" so you don't need a basement area or closet dedicated to that big honkin tank. Sometimes that is important. You normally hang these units on the wall.

But the disadvantages are significant. First, they cost more. A lot more. According to a Consumer Report of October 2008, the typical cost of a tankless system is between $800 and $1200, compared to about $300 to $500 for a tanker. That's at least $500 more up front.

Then there's the cost of installation. According to the same report, a tankless system costs about $1200 to install, as compared to about $300 for the tanker. That's another $900 up front.

Then there's maintenance. A traditional system should be de-calcified every few years, depending on the hardness of your water. But with a tankless system this is a constant concern. Scale build-up is much more of an issue because it is deposited on the inside of relatively small valves and connectors within the system.

If you gum up a tankless system it will stop working efficiently and you will have to replace expensive parts. So regular maintenance is required every year, again, depending on the hardness of your water. And in order to keep it running properly you may be forced to install a water softener. Add at least another $50-$100 per year.

Suddenly the projected savings from a tankless system start to disappear. Consumer Reports estimates the raw energy savings at about 22% a year, which translates into much less than $100 per year (actually they put it at between $70 and $80 per year), depending on your usage.

According to their estimates, once you factor in additional maintenance costs it would take about 22 years to break even on a tankless system. That's longer than the life expectancy of the system. With new advancements in technology you'll probably be replacing it well before that.

Of course money isn't everything. Most home owners routinely drop thousands of dollars on things that have no (or very little) economic payback at all - swimming pools, hot tubs, expensive furniture, big screen TVs, landscaping... you name it.

So if you think installing a tankless hot water heater will help you do your bit to "save the world", then go for it. Just don't be surprised if you realize one day that you probably could have done more to save the world by simply using less hot water.

Many areas outside of our major cities do not have a municipal sewer system, and instead rely on individual septic systems to drain and treat their waste water. In some ways a septic tank is a pretty "green" system. But not if it is mistreated.

Of course not everybody knows how a septic tank works. They think it is a magical place where you can dump just any old thing and expect it to be "taken care of". This is typical of an uninformed attitude towards the environment.

The truth is, septic systems don't use magic to get rid of solid and semi-solid waste material. They use bacteria to break down waste matter - mostly human feces and certain types of bio-degradable paper - and they do an admirable job of it most of the time. But there are some things that the bacterial action in a septic tank will simply not break down.

In my childhood I lived in a small town near Niagara Falls where most of the houses in town were built within a short distance of a creek. From one end of town to the other sewer pipes and a good number of open sewer ditches connected the homes to the creek. Talk about an environmentally challenged system!

Some of these ditches carried the runoff from septic tanks. But in other cases the ditches were connected right up to the drain pipes from homes with no septic tank between the toilet and the ditch.

The result was pretty disgusting - raw sewage running in open ditches. This "system" was not all bad because the ditches themselves tended to act as cleansing agents. The solid matter in the sewage from the houses would settle on the bottom of the ditch and eventually break down into a black foul-smelling ooze. The liquid would either evaporate or run along the ditch and eventually flow into the creek. That is more or less what happens with a septic tank.

But not all was well with the ditch system. When I was a young boy of about 10 or 12 my friends and I spent a good deal of our time exploring the creek. Like good CSI agents we could not help but notice that stuff floating in the open ditches, and it often gave us clues about the lives of the people living in those houses.

You can use your imagination to picture what those people might have been flushing down their toilets. Some were made of heavy-duty absorbent paper materials. Others were made of rubber or vinyl. Some of them may still be floating in the Atlantic Ocean after flowing down the Niagara River, down the St. Lawrence and out to the sea.

This experience taught me at least two important things about life in a town with open ditches, and both of them can be summed up in the aphorism: "Be careful what you flush down your toilet."

While it's true that things have changed a lot since those days, the dynamics of sewage drains and septic tanks is still pretty much the same. Which means the next time you're tempted to flush some greasy gooey stuff, or something made of cardboard or rubber or plastic or vinyl down your toilet, think of those open ditches with all that tell-tale stuff floating in them.

That's exactly the way those things will look in your septic tank. Except they're not going to float away into the river or settle to the bottom of the ditch. They'll stay there until your tank stops working. And in some cases they'll get into your weeping bed and plug that up too.

Free Green Tips for Homeowners

Generally speaking, electric or gas hot water systems account for as much as 20% of a household’s energy usage. Of course this depends on the climate in your area, but you get the general idea.

A big problem is that we turn our hot water heaters up too high. Then to cool the water down to a temperature that is comfortable for washing our hands (for example), we add cold water.

That’s pretty wasteful. It would be better to just turn down the temperature on our hot water heaters.They would use a lot less energy keeping the water hot. It is estimated that for each 10ºF reduction in water temperature, you can save between 3% and 5% in energy costs!

There will also be less heat lost in the pipes when the taps are shut off. Normally hot water sits in the pipes after you’ve drawn some off, and it just simply cools down, wasting the energy it took to warm it up.

Hot water systems also last longer when they don’t heat water as hot, because they don’t have to work as hard, and the cooler temperature is easier on the system as a whole.