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DIY Inline Hot Water Heater?
BoomShake
The EngineerColumbia, MDRegistered User regular
The EngineerColumbia, MDRegistered User regular
At my university, the hot water delivery system is pretty bad. For our set of apartment buildings, there's a single water facility building about half a block and across the street from mine. When water usage is high (during normal hours of the week), it gets hot fairly quickly. However, early morning, very late night, and weekends is a different story, taking upwards of an hour or more to heat up. Housing and university facilities upped the temperature that it's leaving the facility building, but short of altering the system (putting a hot water heater in each building, etc.) I don't see much else they could do.
So, my roommates and I are thinking about doing some sort of inline heating solution. Being poor college students, we'd like it to be a DIY project, but unfortunately most googling gives back DIY installations of prebuilt systems. In our shower, there's about 6in of piping before the showerhead; if we can heat it up in that distance it'd be great. If not, we wouldn't be opposed to adding some piping in between. Conceptually we know what needs to happen (power source, some sort of heating coil element, etc.), but we don't know any specifics on how to actually build it, what materials we'll need, safety precautions, etc.
Anyone ever do something similar, or would know how to accomplish it?
So, my roommates and I are thinking about doing some sort of inline heating solution. Being poor college students, we'd like it to be a DIY project, but unfortunately most googling gives back DIY installations of prebuilt systems. In our shower, there's about 6in of piping before the showerhead; if we can heat it up in that distance it'd be great. If not, we wouldn't be opposed to adding some piping in between. Conceptually we know what needs to happen (power source, some sort of heating coil element, etc.), but we don't know any specifics on how to actually build it, what materials we'll need, safety precautions, etc.
Anyone ever do something similar, or would know how to accomplish it?
BoomShake on
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For safety, the best thing is to buy a tankless water heater and run it inline. Not homemade but safer and pretty easy to do. YOu could do it with a budget of $200 You could also try a Habitat for Humanity recycle center and look for the heater and lines and maybe do it for as little as $50
We're looking to spend as little as possible, which is why we were hoping to be able to just pick up some parts from the local hardware store and put something together.
i.e. remember that you're essentially mixing water with electricity in a DIY/ghetto rigged manner... commercial electric water heaters have all sorts of GFCI protection, temperature measurement, flow measurement, and other safety devices to make them not burn down your house or kill you with electric shock
But no, there are numerous ways to heat water, none of which are available as a "quick fix" at the head. There are tankless water heaters which are on the small side, but are expensive and draw a substantial amount of energy to heat water essentially "instantly."
I think you may have to suck it up and take lukewarm showers.
but they're listening to every word I say
Thanks for the responses.