Water heater is too hot and my faucet washers get mushy?
Keep your hot water tank set at about 120 degrees F. This is hot enough for any household use, and has the added benefit of reducing the seriousness of scalding (especially for children). You will also use less electricity (or gas) to heat your water. I don't know what the best brand of washer is, a good plumbing supply store should be able to help you. Or go with a washerless faucet set.
Will turning up the heat on my water heater make hot water last longer?
turning the thermostat up will make the water closer to the unit A LOT hotter compared to the furthest away faucet. In theory it should stay hotter given that hotter water will take longer to dissipate the heat. BUT consider that if the unit is old and lost most of its efficiency due to age,tear and wear...or for whatever reason the water will cool down fast again. you would have to take the shower 10 or 15 min after the heater was turned on, if you turn it off before taking a shower you run into the possibility that the water cools down a bit. there is a heater unit that you can install in the bathroom. it doesn't have a big reservoir tank, it heats up whatever water that runs through the unit, the unit is many times smaller than a conventional water heater with a tank. consider the unit if you want to save some $$ just in electric bills alone. the down side of this unit is that if you place it at the bath room no other faucet will have hot water. BUT(yes again) you can install a unit over where ever you have yours now AND it still work the same way, you will only get hot water once the hot water side of a faucet is turned on. visit your local hardware store and ask for a tank less water unit. if you only need hotter water on your bathroom consider a small tank less unit. you will save on electric bills. greater savings the longer you keep the unit. gl
What type of material is best used for blocking heat?
I do not work in construction; however, I live in the sunny southwest and in the summer it can get to 115-120 degrees. Even though I have solar screens on the outside of windows to block the sun, the glass still gets hot. I recommend that the perimeter be covered in the material which is a radiant barrier for hot water heaters as listed below. I have used this material to block out the heat in summer and used it in northern New England in the winters to block out cold from windows. I have made solar shading for my car windows to block heat and sun. You can get it at Lowes or Home Depot and there is a special aluminum tape which you can buy to tape sections together. I have saved on home air conditioning bills in the summer due to using this material. The stuff is incredible and you can cover it with material so it is not unattractive. Good Luck!
What does gas, hot water bb mean in a house?
It depends on the cost of fuel or energy used to heat the water going to the base board heaters. The reason systems were designed and used in this fashion was primarily because you could focus all the heating the water at one point and transfer the water to the areas that needed heat. Water has very little insulation and absorbs heat fairly easy and then distributes it to where it is needed within the house with the same ease. There is no duct work with hot water bb, it is just water piping. Any heat not distributed at point of intent from the water returns to the point of heating. Less energy is expended in heating the water back up to design temp before it is supplied to the area intended for heat. Likely there is little to no room for installing any ducting that would be needed for a central air system. Depending on the layout of the house foot print, whether you have a crawl space, basement, second level, etc. it may be possible to retrofit the house with a central air system. You should consider it to be a new install retrofit and you would likely need space outside for a condensing unit, room to install the ducting, etc. You already have the gas hookup so you could run a gas furnace as primary heating with straight AC or run a heat pump and use gas as backup/emergency heat. Cooling listed as 'window' prob means a window AC but if they were real crafty they likely could have meant open the window for coolling...
So, if I understood your question correctly you want a battery-powered heater. And you don’t want one “with cords”.Does “with cords” mean one that you plug in to the mains electricity at home? And you don’t want that because they greatly increase your “house bills” by which I guess you mean your electricity bill?The problem is that batteries will not be able to power a heater of any significant heat output. And if you do try to use batteries the cost will be hugely more than than the electricity bill you already resent paying…How much more expensive?Well take a look at the datasheet for a Duracell 1.5 v ‘D’ cell. This cell will last about 7 hours whilst producing a constant 1 W of power. Let’s say you find a 1 kW heater that runs on batteries (unlikely!) You can run it using 1000 of these batteries and it will run for 7 hours. Those batteries come in packs of 10 for £13.56 (including tax) or ‘only’ £11.65 when you buy over 25 packs. To power your battery heater for 7 hours will require 100 packs of 10 batteries at a cost of £1165.00.Instead, if you run the heater on household mains electricity, the 7 kWh to run it for 7 hours would cost me fractionally more than £1.So my example shows a battery-powered heater costing over one thousand times more to run than a mains-powered one. And you’re worried about your household electric bill!Of course I may have missed your point completely. Maybe “with cords” doesn’t mean what I understood it to mean.
You do not have the values for enough parameters for anyone to give you a precise answer. For example:How much water do you have? A big pot of 10 liters of water, or a thimble full of 10 cc (10 ml) of water?How fast are you putting heat in? Big burner putting out a lot of heat? or is it an electrical heating element turned way down so that the element is barely 11 degrees warmer than the water you are trying to warm? How much of the heat that the burner or electric element is putting out actually gets into the pot?How fast is heat escaping the vessel holding the water? For example, do you have a lid on your pot, to prevent heat escaping out the top?How is the water mixing? Do you expect the water to be uniformly about 10 degrees C, or do you want to stop the clock as soon as any localized portion of the body of water over a hot spot reaches 10 degrees warmer?What do you mean “about 10 degrees”? Zero degrees is ABOUT 10 degrees…. compared to 2000 degrees. If you look at it that way….about no time at all.Here’s another consideration : What temperature is the water at now? if it’s at 95 degrees centigrade, and you are at sea level, you will NEVER be able warm that water up 10 degrees C; it will boil away before it warms up more than 5 degrees.And that raises another variable: What is your atmospheric pressure? Are you located in Kathmandu, Nepal, at 1400 meters above sea level, because water will boil at a lower temperature at higher elevations (see the previous point)?So, talking all the above into account, the correct answer is:About somewhere between NO TIME AT ALL and AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIME.
If you do this in North America or Japan, you will most likely get a painful jolt in the arm that you feel up past the elbow. It is no fun at all. But that is because the metal in between the two prong sockets takes most of the current. It you instead used took two forks, broke of all except one prong and used one in each hand to jam in each socket, you would direct all the current through your heart and likely die instantly.But if you are in Europe, Australia or most other parts of the world where the voltage is between 200 and 240 volts, double that of North America, there would be a big flash, drops of molten metal would fly out, and you would not only die but fill the room with the smell of burnt flesh and hair and plastic and metal vapors. Don’t ever take a chance with this. I’ve seen the results of a short circuit inside a desktop computer power supply in Australia and there was scorch and burn marks all over the inside of the case, the motherboard and other circuit boards.Also if you ever go into a telecom facility where routers and switches are installed, into the area where they have their battery banks that supply -48DC to everything, keep away from them especially if you wear anything metal like a watch or belt buckle. At one facility there were little burn spots all over everything, walls pillars, etc. A worker installing overhead ladder racks dropped a steel wrench which landed across two busbars and shorted out. The Wrench instantly vaporized and little drops of molten steel sprayed out over everything. Luckily he was high enough above it to not suffer serious burns. There was no sign of the wrench anywhere, except lots of little burned spots.Electricty is dangerous.Also, if you remember that voltage measures electrical pressure (electro-motive force) then you will understand why 240V is more dangerous than 120V. All those movie effects that use high voltage sparks usually are done using capacitors. This means that when the sparks fire the voltage very quickly drops to zero and therefore they are not as dangerous as touching a high voltage line downed in a storm.Bottom line, don’t play with electricity or experiment with it until your have a really good understanding of static electricity, direct current electricity and alternating current electricity. They all behave differently under some circumstances and all of them can maim and kill if the conditions are right.
Why don't I have any hot water in my house?
If the pilot light is out, try re lighting it. If it doesnt stay lit then you will need either a new thermocouple or a new gas control valve. I have a whirlpool water heater only 3 years old and the gas control valve already went out a year ago, it appears to be pretty common. They have some kind of special safety feature in them now and they are JUNK. I took the gas valve out of a hot water heater i picked up off of craigslist for free and installed it (the hookup and design of the gas valves have apparently been the same for many years, i didnt have to do any modifications to make the 20 year old gas valve work with my then 2 year old water heater). If I had to replace a gas valve again i would do the same thing. You just cant buy anything good anymore. Everything new these days is safety or emission controlled to the point of being non functioning junk.