Yeah, my parents actually have that solution you mention: a tankless water heater in their new house which heats the water centrally and sends it around the house. It's not bad but I wonder about heat losses in transit.
In Asia the point of use water heaters are also set higher. The ones in my friends' place were set at 58C, and you really needed to be careful when you turned on the hot water: hot water was hot. Because they were at the point of use there weren't any concerns about heat loss, but there can be a danger of scalding if the temperature is set too high.
(There was a nice guesthouse in Tokyo which carefully labeled each hot water tap with a sign that said, "Hot water is hot!" It seems redundant but if you're from the States and not expecting water hot enough to scald to come out of the tap, it's a useful warning.)
I think the point of use air conditioning wins in comparison to ducted central air, because you don't need to retrofit ductwork into your house if it's not already there. But even new construction seems to default to this cooling solution. puffydrake's house was built only a couple of years ago and uses this method of cooling, and it seems like it's just the way residential buildings are constructed. (Commercial buildings do often have central air.)
Finally, I forgot about my friends' spiffy new Siemens washer, which like most German front-loading washing machines has an in-washer water heater, rather than relying on an incoming hot water feed. The temperature setting on it goes up to 90 C, which I used on my white shirts. They got very clean.
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Date: 2010-05-24 03:53 pm (UTC)In Asia the point of use water heaters are also set higher. The ones in my friends' place were set at 58C, and you really needed to be careful when you turned on the hot water: hot water was hot. Because they were at the point of use there weren't any concerns about heat loss, but there can be a danger of scalding if the temperature is set too high.
(There was a nice guesthouse in Tokyo which carefully labeled each hot water tap with a sign that said, "Hot water is hot!" It seems redundant but if you're from the States and not expecting water hot enough to scald to come out of the tap, it's a useful warning.)
I think the point of use air conditioning wins in comparison to ducted central air, because you don't need to retrofit ductwork into your house if it's not already there. But even new construction seems to default to this cooling solution. puffydrake's house was built only a couple of years ago and uses this method of cooling, and it seems like it's just the way residential buildings are constructed. (Commercial buildings do often have central air.)
Finally, I forgot about my friends' spiffy new Siemens washer, which like most German front-loading washing machines has an in-washer water heater, rather than relying on an incoming hot water feed. The temperature setting on it goes up to 90 C, which I used on my white shirts. They got very clean.