On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:38:06 -0700, "william_b_noble"
wrote:

well, I think I can "bottom that" , so to speak, but not personally - I had
a co-worker years ago who claimed that he had a friend (get the drift of
this) who discovered that in his apt he paid for heat, but not for hot
water. so he got an old car radiator and a fan and ran hot water through it
to heat his place rather than use the electric heat - of course it probably
actually cost 1,000 times as much, but to him it was "free"

That's not nearly as dumb (or expensive) as it sounds IF the
building has a natural gas, propane, oil or coal fired hot water
boiler. And IF the guy reroutes the water back to the cold-water line
for reheating instead of dumping it down the sink.

I've worked on a few 150-unit small apartment (studios and
1-bedroom) buildings where each unit has a big 40-gallon regular gas
domestic water heater and a heating coil in the air conditioning
handler (hall drop ceiling) for heat.

Even after figuring in a small Grundfos wet-rotor pump and a
motor-operated water valve it's still cheaper than installing a
separate wall furnace and split AC. Much cheaper than a heat pump.

Of course, the same building had to turn off the breakers to all the
AC Service Plugs on the roof, seems the tenants who had their power
cut off for non-payment were running cords down into their units...

-- Bruce --

--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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