desmondo84

We're looking at renovating our 2nd bathroom which is about 50 miles away from the hot water tank... Pumping water to it is going to pretty inefficient I imagine so wondering what other options are out there? Solar panels for hot water worth it? Or what do you call that instant hot water by gas? Any recommendations?

TIA

MrsFychan

I think the hot water by gas is the infinity heater?

Snap Shot

We've got an infinity hot water system. Apparently there is an electric coil inside the hot water pipe and gas burners under the pipe. Outside the house, I assume.

We have a 'box' on an exterior wall of the house. The gas and electric is triggered when there is a demand for hot water and it stops when the hot tap/shower etc is switched off.

So, when we turn on the hot tap it takes a few minutes for the hot water to turn up (this is why we've nicknamed it 'eternity hot water' as it seems to take a long time)

In reality, it's no slower or quicker than when we had cylinder hot water back in Britain. The difference being that once it runs hot, there's no worries about emptying the hot water cylinder. That's why it's called infinity, I assume.

We have a two storey house. I assume if the house was busier and a bath and/or showers and washing up were all happening simultaneously everyone would get their hot water needs met.

The only thing I would point out is that if there's a power surge, it will short circuit the external unit. That happened to us about three years ago. It's got about 20 hours back up power then there's no more hot water. It cost us nearly $2,000 to have a replacement supplied and installed. Fortunately we could claim off our household insurance but we still had to put up with the $400 excess.

I got about ten bucks for the old unit from our local scrap metal dealer !

Bo-Jangles

Otherwise known as a combi boiler in the UK