The Home Ownership Thread

[SixOhNine]

You live in Houston?

Used to. Moved away 4+ years ago.

 

[brokencycle]

I also would like to read the trials and tribulations of imatlas installing his own tankless heater

It can't be worse than booth.

Absolutely love tankless water heaters, but yeah, retrofitting can be a crap shoot. It cost us something like an extra 2k to put one in our previous house. Worth it, though.

The company that did the work was fantastic, if anyone in the Houston area wants a recommendation.

Ours was something like $500 because the units were the same price, but they had to make some changes to the gas line for the tankless (somehow just replacing the old tanked one didn't require said changes). I calculated that our gas savings on the new tankless vs the 20 year old tanked covered the $500 premium in 2 years. Obviously a new tanked would have performed better, but good enough for government work.

would be an interesting disco to follow.

we have a tiny *master* bath that we have to rearrange. our bathrooms '69' in plan and, actually, all of our house water heat comes from the tank in our bathroom, including the kitchen. because of that tank we can't get a tub into the bath, it's all extremely tightly fit lol.

so my FIL who was an electrician thought we might relocate the boiler to the attic so we could embiggen the door etc. we also have a second tank in the garage that goes unused, i think it serves the washer connection but we don't use that rn. maybe that is an option as well idk. a tankless unit would take up as much space in the bath afaik.

The tankless definitely takes up less space, but you have to keep enough clearances around it, so it isn't like you can 100% reclaim all the space you save.

 

[Numbernine]

My tankless is pretty old but if the new ones are similar and I suspect they are I would strongly advise not putting one on an inside wall. Not only is the venting expensive but if you don't like the sound of a small jet in the room you won't like it.

 

[SixOhNine]

It can't be worse than booth.



Ours was something like $500 because the units were the same price, but they had to make some changes to the gas line for the tankless (somehow just replacing the old tanked one didn't require said changes). I calculated that our gas savings on the new tankless vs the 20 year old tanked covered the $500 premium in 2 years. Obviously a new tanked would have performed better, but good enough for government work.

We replaced an electric tank with a gas tankless, so they had to run a gas line through the attic (house was on a slab foundation) and cut a hole in the roof for the vent. It was a fairly significant amount of work. I didn't run a cost analysis to figure out when/if we broke even, but the reason we replaced the old heater was because the drain spigot at the bottom literally popped out one afternoon and we didn't realize it until the laundry room had two inches of water on the floor. Never having to worry about that happening again was worth a lot.

 

[jbarwick]

One of the bushes is blooming and I have no clue what this is. I can’t recall seeing a bush flower without leaves.

 

[double00]

looks like salix? (willow)

 

[NorCal]

What is this about? It is a drain coming from my old dishwasher that attaches to a thingy to the right of my sink. This thingy sticks through my counter, like a soap dispenser, but all it does is drain back to the u bend under the sink.
I'm putting in a new dishwasher and need to figure out if I can just skip this whole mess.

 

[NorCal]

Above the sink

 

[Texasmade]

It's for air pressure so the drain can flow smoothly.

 

[otc]

Air gap. Prevents possible backflow into clean water if the drain backs up.

Do you need it? Depends on local code I guess.

Given you have one, the answer is probably yes.

 

[Numbernine]

Above the sink View attachment 1589768

It prevents contaminated water from the dishwasher from entering and contaminating the domestic water supply. They are required by code everywhere in California AFAIK. They are cheap and easy to replace

 

[NorCal]

“Easy”. In theory yes. Under my cramped ass sink, not so much.

 

[RedLantern]

As someone who hates the look of them, I would remove, run a “high line” and replace with a soap dispenser or spray hose maybe, or even a flat plug.

 

[Numbernine]

As someone who hates the look of them, I would remove, run a “high line” and replace with a soap dispenser or spray hose maybe, or even a flat plug.

That will work but not to code

 

[PhilKenSebben]

That will work but not to code

Sounds like a perfect solution then!