Replaced shower cartridge in guest bath

 Replaced the shower faucet cartridge in the boys’ bathroom with a Moen 1200 cartridge. No photo. The squeal is gone!

Water heater anode

Flushed the water heaters and checked the anode on the buffer tank. Looks like we have several years yet before having to replace the anode rods!

Heat Pump Water Heater

 Our 10-year-old natural gas water heater had about reached its life expectancy, and it was the last thing responsible for us paying money to the gas utility every month. We replaced it this weekend with a heat-pump hybrid electric water heater! A Rheem Proterra 50 gallon tank, in our case. It has both standard resistive heating elements, and a heat pump (hence "hybrid"). The resistive elements draw 4500 watts when you need heat in a hurry, but the heat pump draws only 400 watts. Interestingly, at 400 watts, a heat-pump-only version of this tank could easily run on a standard 120 volt 15 amp electrical circuit.

We have been working towards this since we replaced our natural gas furnace with a ground-source heat pump, but supply chain issues and life in general meant we kept the natural gas water heater for an entire extra year.

First we drained the old water heater and removed the exhaust flue:

I had to be careful of the coolant lines for the ground-source heat pump. Pretty inconvenient that they run down the middle of the mechanical room like that.

Then I wrangled the new water heater into place and plumbed it up.

Extra stuff: there's a 2" foam pad between the concrete and the tank, both for thermal insulation and vibration isolation. Then a drain pan to catch any stray water and direct it away from the pad toward the floor drain. I have a "heat trap" loop on the hot water output, to prevent convection or thermosiphon heat losses. There's a thermostatic mixing valve to prevent scalding, and an expansion valve (rather than a bulky expansion tank) which routes to a plastic vinyl tube manifolded with the condensate drains from the ERV and the heat compressor on the water heater. 

The Proterra tank is also an Internet of Things device, so I can schedule heating to run when our solar panels are likely to be producing extra electricity. I can also monitor how much hot water is in the tank, which has been my current pointless obessession since I installed the tank. The tank also reports how much electricity it consumes, but that hasn't really agreed well with the energy tracking I've done with my Emporia Energy monitor. I've seen other complaints about the energy reporting not being very accurate, so I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Emporia.

The old water heater used 12-14 therms of natural gas in a month, which is equivalent to about 350-400 kWh of electricity per month. We're on track to use about 60-70 kWh of electricity per month with the new hybrid water heater after the first week.

One tricky part is that we're planning to add a second "desuperheater" tank (already purchased, and taking up space in our finished basement) to scavenge heat from the ground-source heat pump and preheat the cold water before it goes into this tank. So the plumbing isn't final. But that will wait until the old natural gas piping is removed, to make room for the second tank.

https://precisioncomfort.com/home-comfort-product-choices/new-homes/heating-cooling-comfort-options-new-homes/geothermal-option-what-is-a-geothermal-desuperheater/

Thinking About Residential Grey Water

While working on using less resources as a family, we have mostly focused on reducing electricity and eliminating fossil fuels as a household. But here in Colorado, plain old water is actually becoming a scarce resource.

We dealt with this a little bit when we installed a DIY on-demand hot water reciculation pump in the master bathroom. And it looks like just that change reduced our water consumption by about 15% year-over-year. Once I had water conservation on my brain, I started thinking about reusing grey water. 

Grey water is typically sourced from bathroom sinks and showers, and clothes washers, usually requiring you to use specific soaps, shampoos and detergents. The grey water is then used to water landscaping or flush toilets.

Our drainage plumbing doesn't distinguish between sinks and showers vs toilets, so that's a non-starter forus. However, I do have several sources of "clean" grey water that currently go straight to a drain:

• Condensate from the ground-source heat pump
• Condensate from the Energy-Recovery Ventilator
• Drain from the clothes washer
• Drain from the (future) heat-pump clothes dryer
• Drain from the flush cycle of the water softener

Of these, the condensate drains are probably too miniscule to bother with, although I haven't actually measured. The really interesting one (to me) is the flush cycle of the water softener. Right now, all that water goes straight down the drain. In my house, I think I can plausibly use that water to help refill the toilet tanks in two bathrooms, with minimal plumbing work. I'll have to stick a bucket under the water softener flush drain and see what kind of flow rates I get, and how cloudy the water is.

Hot Water Recirculation Pump

 We added a hot water recirculation pump to our master bathroom.

This pump is designed to take water from the "hot" water pipe, and shove it into the "cold" water pipe. There's a built-in therostat, so when hot water from the water heater arrives at the pump, the pump shuts off. The system is designed to run continuously, which is nice for always having hot water, but both wastes heat from the hot water (becuase the builders of this house didn't bother to insulate the hot water lines, and uses electricity throughout the day.

I put our reciculating pump on a smart plug, and put a button next to our shower:

Now, rather than turning on the shower and waiting for the water to get warm (and not always being prompt about getting in the shower once the water is warm), we can push the button, and five minutes later the water is hot, with none of it going down the drain!

This actually had a noticeable impact on our water bill. And since our sewer charge is based on water usage in the winter, it's a double win!

Xeriscape

Since our front and back yards were destroyed in the process of installing the geothermal wells in our back yard, Brianna is taking the opportunity to xeriscape the front yard and plant native, low-water grasses in the back yard. Here are some shots of the new front yard:

The new grasses Brianna purchased for the back yard apparently don't produce pollen - it will be interesting to see if my grass allergies are significantly impacted by the new plants. Here's hoping!

Rachio Sprinkler System Up and Running

Back in March, I installed the hardware for a Rachio Smart Wifi Sprinkler Controller (Gen 1), which I had picked up on clearance as they got ready for the Gen 2. Today, I turned the sprinkler system on.

I found one leak that was an easy fix, and another leak that's going to require a shovel to even find the root problem (I'll deal with it later Edit - it's done).

It took some persistent googling, but I eventually found Parker's voluntary watering schedule:

VOLUNTARY SUMMER WATERING SCHEDULE
Addresses that end in an EVEN number	SUNDAY, TUESDAY, THURSDAY
Addresses that end in an ODD number	MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, SATURDAY
Multifamily, HOA and Commercial Properties	MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, SATURDAY

The Rachio was pretty simple to configure, and it wasn't too much more effort to get it integrated with Alexa.

Next time Lincoln doesn't want to come indoors, it will be: "Alexa, turn on the backyard sprinklers!"

Edit: Wow, this new controller is SO much easier to configure than the old "dumb" controller!

Edit 2: we had a big rainstorm this afternoon, so Rachio skipped the watering event scheduled for tonight. Excellent!