We're looking at having to replace both our furnace and water heater in the future- what alternatives are there to the traditional models?

So, did you just want the first thread in all the subforums here? :LOL

I can't tell you alternatives but I do know the newer furnaces are so much more efficient. We are looking into getting one in the next year or so. A friend of ours bought one and they are saving a lot of $$ each month so it will pay for itself quickly.

The hot water on demand systems "tankless heaters" are apparently far more efficient than the standard heaters. DH also says that you cannot get extended hot water, so no 20 minute showers unless you have low-flow shower heads.
I have heard complaints that they take slightly longer than a regular system to start pumping water up, but at my house the water takes forever anyways. Also, there is less of a chance that the heater will leak.

I thought that the tankless systems were supposed to have an unlimited supply once the heater was turned on?? I was looking forward to getting one when our dinosaur dies. What about a solar water heater? My inlaws have one. They live in another country, so I am not sure how available they are here.

you could always do solar water heating. its really easy and you can do it yourself, depending ou=n how complex of a system you set up. it can be as easy as a coil of tubing or a metal barrel painted black and set out in the sun in a reflective box, or it can be a super complex tubing system thing on your roof.

I asked DH, and he says basically if your shower uses 8gal/min but the hot water heater may only be able to produce 7 gal hot water/min so your shower would gradually get cooler. Same goes with a bath. Disclaimer: this was the case a few years ago, when they were brand new products
My parents have a heat exchange system where the water pipes are heated passively by the chimney before going into their hot water tank. I believe that is easier to set up in new construction though

I was just so excited for this forum LOL
we were looking at the tankless systems today. The ones we saw said they are not to be used in places where more than one appliance at a time needs hot water- ie shower and sink, etc. My husband said he had heard you need to have one at each location- liek one on the bathroom, one in the kitchen, one in the laundry. They definitely don't seem liek they would work for us, I need hot baths, and dh takes long hot showers. He is thinking about a geothermal system that uses the natural heat in the earth. I'll let you knwo what we find out about those.

We are looking into this as well, as propane is so expensive. For heat, we are considering buy a wood pellet stove. You can buy it as a furnace, wood stove, or fire place. You can buy the wood pellets by the bag and have it delivered to your house. The wood pellets are recycled wood materials, and burn very clean. You load the stove up and some models you only have to fill it every few days and empty out the ashes once a week. Also, many models have thermostats, remote igniters, etc. They are also getting into burning corn.

We are also looking at the option of installing a geothermal heating and cooling system, which also includes your hot water heater. We have an unfinished basement, so we have access to our floors at this point. If you house is completely finished, this would be pretty hard. It is really expensive to install, but your monthly costs go down to about $20.00 a month in the middle of winter, we are told.

We are researching this still, so if anyone has any experience with either of these, let us know what you think!

Our house is finished (we're about 50 years to late for that), but we don't have any lawn or anything to be concerned about ripping up, and it just so happens that my husband is a geologist, and does drilling for a living. He could probably have the hole drilled for a 6 pack of beer, and he thinks he could do the rest of the work himself if he could find a consultant to guide him. Our gas bill has been $300-400 this winter (our first winter in this house) so we seriously need to cut that down.

Hi, everyone! :)

I wanted to add some info about tankless water heaters. I just had a Bosch 125 tankless water heater installed at my house. I'm not out in the country, so I bought the model that runs on natural gas.

We have endless hot water; shower after shower, one appliance after another... but we can't demand more than the water heater puts out. The Bosch 125 is made to put out enough hot water for 2 sinks at a time or 1 shower at a time. If the shower is running I have to wait to run a hot water appliance or use hot water in the sink, or all the water turns cold.

My washing machine has it's own internal water heater, as do many new appliances, so I can run it while the shower and sinks are being used.

There are models that put out a larger volume of hot water per minute. I chose our model because we only have one shower in our house. When we add another bathroom with a shower, we will add another small tankless water heater to heat water for the new shower.

I feel like the tankless water heaters are pretty effecient. Plus, I bought mine on-line for just about as much as a standard tank water heater. ;)

Hi Khris,
The lady, Sherry, who runs the co-p has a tank less water heater. Call or e-mail her to find out how it has worked out for their family.
I think it has worked out very well. She has not complained and they can take one shower after another. I don't think they run out of hot water. That is the point I thought. It heats it as you use it?

Anyway, ask Sherry:)

Collette

Thanks Collette, I will ask her!

Consider looking into a heat pump- also, if yo have a boiler and aren't ready to go tankless, consider a Boilermate-

Khrisday, you would be so lucky if you could get a geothermol set up. We looked into them here and they are soooooo expensive. We were looking at heating and cooling for the future. We went to a local show house that was "green" in the summer and it had a heat pump, and it was really comfortable even with crowds shuffling through on a hot sunny day. At the time I looked into it, a major cost was getting someone to drill it that knew how to do it properly, which meant hiring an engineer, etc. Also, there were a couple different types of systems, and one was preferrable to the other. If you do install one, I would be real interested in hearing about it and the costs involved.

Very interested in the geothermal system as well. How does it work?

here's a link that explains it:
http://www.geoexchange.org/about/how.htm