green energy fraud

Pandy said :

When we had our instant gas HWS installed the ACTEW shop informed us the NO new HWS system fitted in the ACT to a residence is permitted to go hotter than 50c

That ACTEW shop is clueless.

Install a under-the-sink HWS in the kithcen if you must.

I like this idea, but then thats another kettle of fish. Which brand? Adding to other posts regarding sink volume verses using a dishwasher, new houses are now plumbed out with plasticy type piping (copper no more). By the time the hot water gets from our solar HWS to the kitchen sink HOT, we have already wasted a sink full of water. If we have to wash in the sink, we boil the kettle.

When we had our instant gas HWS installed the ACTEW shop informed us the NO new HWS system fitted in the ACT to a residence is permitted to go hotter than 50c

That ACTEW shop is clueless.

Install a under-the-sink HWS in the kithcen if you must.

I would ask the installer to come back and check that the thermostat at the unit is adjusted correctly. Also, make sure the timer is working properly. Worked for us.

I am now going to try having a go at the tempering valve.

When we had our instant gas HWS installed the ACTEW shop informed us the NO new HWS system fitted in the ACT to a residence is permitted to go hotter than 50c. For the solar ones that means fiting the cool down system and for the others they come direct for the factory pre set at 50 max.

But yes – try cleaning a greasy BBQ plate with 50 deg water….

Some of these valves are adjustable. The following steps could give you 60 degree water.

1st Find the tempering valve – The tempering valve will have 2 pipes into it(a hot and cold usually from the top and bottom of tank) and one pipe out of it which is the “barely warm” hot water supply to the house. And a plastic cap.

2nd Pop the plastic cap off, and look for an adjusting screw. Mine has a triangular shaped screw head.

3rd Use something like a pair of pliers and turn the adjustment anticlockwise all the way.

4th Test the water temperature. If you made the water colder then turn it clockwise all the way.

5th Pop the plastic cap back on.

There are other more drastic options to get around the nanny on your hot water system, however Solar hot water can get really hot, my tank reaches 95 degrees Celsius, so the valve is not such a bad idea it just needs a minor adjustment to ease it out of the nanny state.

DeadlySchnauzer said :

A quick google of “dishwasher versus hand washing” will give you a bajillion articles on this. The general consensus is that if you are very very careful with your water usage and load sizes its possible to *match* a dish washer with hand washing, but its almost impossible to beat one, especially newer really efficient ones.

And if you have a F&P Dish Drawer unit, where 4 out of 5 times you only use half the dishwasher (one drawer) the water use is even less.

They didn’t do them fancy arsed 1.5 bowl sinks back in the 50s mate, haha.

I don’t know what kind of crazy sinks people have, but the standard 1.5 bowl sinks from most manufacturers are ~30L total capacity. If you fill that up 3/4 thats 22L. On top of that the load sizes people do for hand washing (generally after one or two meals) tend to be much smaller than a fully packed dish washer.

A quick google of “dishwasher versus hand washing” will give you a bajillion articles on this. The general consensus is that if you are very very careful with your water usage and load sizes its possible to *match* a dish washer with hand washing, but its almost impossible to beat one, especially newer really efficient ones.

“But on water usage you are putting at least 30L of water in to your sink when washing dishes, while a dishwasher is at 10-15L per load depending on model.”

That’s funny. While I long for the day our renos actually start and then finish so we can get a dishawasher again, there’s no way we use 30L during dishwashing.

We have a single sink in our old 50s kitchen and we use a bucket for rinsing water. It has markings on it so I know that we use no more than 5L for rinsing. The sink itself would be lucky to have much more water. So even at a comfortable over estimation of 8l that still only makes a total of 13l.

Yep – nothing to do with fraud. Just lazy plumbing that often causes an undeserved backlash against solar HWSs.

As others have said you are required to fit a tempering valve to prevent scalds in the bathrooms. But you aren’t required to have them on the laundry or kitchen. But plumbers take the easy way out of putting one straight on the HWS tank, and it therefore cools the supply to all hot water taps. And they never educate the purchaser as to the impacts. People then think their HWS is crap.

It costs a little more but you can get the tempering valves fitted for the bathroom supplies only. The plumber would get paid for the additional installation, but they seem to fail to learn from the kid at the McDonalds drive through that they can augment their business by adopting a “you want fries with that?” approach…

On the overall topic, in our home we have the scaldingly untempered hot water to the kitchen and laundry for when we need it, but apart from piping the tempered supply to the bathrooms, we also have a branch line taking that 50 degrees water to the dishwasher. Fisher and Paykel advised that the maximum incoming water temperature for their units is 60 degrees.

By doing this we are using free solar-heated water rather than leaving the dishwasher to heat cold water at full peak electricity rates. Some cycles require up to 70 degrees, so the washer only heats the difference. Big savings.