our new house will be over 70 ft long with the kitchen/washer on one end and two baths on the other...another bath in the middle.....question would it make more sense to have 2 small hot water tanks, one on either end, or just one big one on the kitchen/washer side.
thanks
paul
Paul wrote:>our new house will be over 70 ft long with the kitchen/washer
How about well-insulated pipes with a small recirculating pump? If it's a new house, of course. Tom Work at your leisure!
I'd put one big one between the 3 baths (closer to the 2 at the end) and insulate the pipes to the kitchen/washer. When you use hot water in the kitchen and washer, you use a lot of hot water at once and it also doesn't matter so much if you have to let it run a 10 seconds to get hot. In the bathrooms, you want the water to be hot almost instantly, and you often only run a little bit of hot water.
I'd also run 1/2" pipe to the kitchen/washer hot water if the local code doesn't make you run 3/4"; you don't care so much about the volume dropping when both are open at once, and the 1/2" pipe will deliver hot water faster because it only has half as much water standing in it between uses.
If you do use 2 water heaters, plumb the inlet of the small tank with hot water from the big one to dramatically reduce its recovery time.
That's my opinion, anyway, Bob
My old home was like this, I installed an recalculating pump at the farthest bathroom. I would get up hit the button which ran an timer. The pump would turn on and pull the hot water to that sink. Since I got up first it worked fine. Took 2-4 minutes depending on the season, winter longer. After my shower the pipes warmed up enough that no one else noticed much. What I really worried about was the heat loss in the pipes. My pipes were underground and the home was built in 1969. Insulating the pipes if possible will help wonders over the life of the home on energy bills.
my house is about 110' long and this is what i did. very much more economical than having the expense of buying 2 water heaters, and paying to keep 2 tanks hot.. you can put the pump on a small appliance timer to save even more.
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