16 years
Basically there are two main solutions providing hot water:
- Gas boilers
- Electric tank heaters
Electric heaters are easy to install, but it takes couple of hours to warm up the water and has only certain capacity, and if this amount of water has been used, the hot water simply disappears... :(
The gas boilers has the advantage of providing constant hot water,although has to be placed in the basement or a central area, and the water stored in the piping will cool down: which means depending the distance between the showers and the heating unit, it could take up to couple of minutes until the actual hot water reaches the bathrooms.
There is a pretty expensive solution to have constant hot water: this needs some circulators and a returning pipe to the heating unit, which provides the water circulating, won't let it cool down. For this you need to rebuild your showers, so most people are not interested, due the high costs. Therefore this could be only new and/or big hostels solution.
We are a small hostel, so rather worked out a cheaper solution for our existing bathrooms which combines the both technologies.
It is as simply as:
Gas heater unit -> Electric Tank Heater -> Showers
The gas heater is the main source of hot water, although it goes directly to the tank, not the showers. The tank holds the water hot for the next few hours and if the water cools down, it reheats the water to a certain temperature. The tank is installed locally, right next to the showers, and the running water is almost immediately hot, and we don't have to worry about running out! ;)
If anyone interested about this technology or a draft, just PM me, I'll help you out! :cool:
Log in to join discussion