Hot water plumbing question

[jplasater]

My wife and I are building a new house and we are going to have the plumber install two hot water heaters both in our crawl space which is spacious. One of the heaters will be under the kitchen and service the kitchen and the adjoining utility room. The other heater will be at the other end of the house under the master bath room and it will also supply the guest bath room. My question is this. Can this be plumbed in a way that will allow the two heaters to feed off each other and thereby double the capacity of water available at each end? I can understand how you could put two heaters side by side and connect them in series and have all of the hot water serviced from the

2nd heater in the series. However, I can't figure out how you can accomplish the same thing with two heaters that are located at each end of a house.

[Phil Scott]

have the

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service

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at each

you will be better off with isolated heaters ...no cross connects. but its possible though.

an unmessy way would be to keep separate cold water feeds to each heater but connect the hot water outlets with a cross over between the heaters, full line size in your case probably

3/4" copper

then draw the hot water from both ends of the house from a single T in the middle of the cross over. Use 2" of fiber glass insulation on the cross over.

Phil Scott

[job]

what kind of h/w heaters are they? my guess they are tankless and if spec'ed out correctly, you will have continuous and unending supply of hot water.

[Lil' Dave]

Your question was answered by others.

I understand the proximity of hot water supply to its feed. That is, the closer the hot water source to the kitchen/bathroom, the faster the hot water valve will produce hot water. This is especially important with subfloor/crawlspace piping routes, even if the all the piping is well insulated.

Am envisioning a hot water heater in crawlspace under the subflooring. How does one provide drainage to it? Am not refering to the overtemp/overpressure side, but only simple drainage. The remainder of the plumbing drain lines will be above the bottom of the hot water heater under the subfloor. By the time the primary drain line is at or below the vertical plane of the bottom of the hot water heater, it will most likely exited the house perimeter.

The other item is the hot water heater platform. Is this hung from the subfloor framing, or is this independent of the subfloor and remaining house framing? An independent concrete slab maybe?

Note that my recently built home has a crawlspace varying between 18" and almost 4' under the sill. The subfloor framing consists of a sill, and the subfloor framing sits atop the sill. The drain lines begin their gradual descent at the top of the sill and run downhill from there. Where between the sill joists, the drain lines run parallel with these until under the sill. So, I have a visual with adequate crawlspace to go by. I just can't picture it. Someone fill me in here.

[JerryD(upstateNY)]

First, you want two heaters, one at either end of the house so one is close to your kitchen and the other is close to your master bath. Then you want to hook them together which puts the hot water supply ½ house away from the fixtures. You might just as well put the two water heaters next to each other in the middle of the house. Putting an on-demand water heater at each end of the house solves all your problems. The hot water is near the fixtures and you have a unlimited supply.