Re: tankless water heaters

[elnav]

SpringtimeHome wrote that tankless water heaters are now frowned upon as not being green enough because it uses non renewable resources. This particular bit of information must have been written somewhere in the east. I can think of four sources of heat that are renewable without being solar. Methane from a digester is renewable. Wood gas which has recently also gotten honerable mention on this forum, and then there is hydro-electric either in micro hydro generation or large utility generation. A Jean Paine compost pile also generates enough heat to give hot water. If wind or solar is used to pump water up to a head tank you have gravity feed for the running water while still being renewable.

For whatever reason animal power is never discussed under alternatives nor is river driven water wheels like the boat mills that powered European industry for over a millenium before steam power took over. It looks to me like too many people believe anything they read without being the least bit critical of the facts being presented. Someone asked me for a price quote on going solar citing as his reason that he wanted to be green. Evidently he had seen some advertising from someplace where coal fired generation was the norm. He lived practically next door to one of the biggest hydro-electric facilities in the west. The dam has been built for a half century and whatever enviromental impact it did have, has long since been mitigated by natural regeneration by mother nature.