Hoooooly crap you guys .... Tom, IMO your guest are killing you ... Should be < 5 per month.
Tank type users, if you can spare the extra labor < 30 seconds :
Lite pilot only to get main flame going .... Heat water for PM shower and dishes, then turn it all off. You will get a sense of how long you need to run heater for AM shower if/if not but NO WAY pilot flame needs to burn during all this ... Total waste.
aloha,
pog
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Pog - my pilot light is not easy to get to. I'd rather keep it burning but I don't need to heat water beforehand. And I really would prefer to shower before heading into work.
Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
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Thanks for all the info. I forgot -- I also have gas dryers in both units, which I'm guessing might actually be the major consumers. They must be electronic ignition, since I've never lit a pilot on them, but I know for sure that the tank water heater has a pilot, but that might be the only pilot in the whole place, since my side of the duplex has electronic ignition tankless (Bosch, which I'm not all that satisfied with, sometimes it goes on, sometimes not).
It all boils down (pun intended) to the tossup between switching tanks and getting them filled, or paying the exorbitant cost of delivered gas.
Ideally, I would like solar heated hot water, gas for cooking, and I guess gas for drying, but I'm not totally sure that's cheaper than electric.
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I have 3 tanks. I bought all 3 from pahoa battery place because they include the built in gas gauge ... It's pretty accurate. I use gas for hot water and cooking (gas stove). The cool thing about living in hawaiian beaches at the end of a road, is the water is preheated and we normally just leave the heat on low and pressure at maximum ... In the winter we have to bump the heat level up a bit. But we take two showers daily and sometimes I'm in the shower for 20+ minutes ... I'm not trying to conserve and usually our for the shower 5 gal, lasts half a year.
For cooking, 5 gal we normally get 3 months out of it. Our cloths dryer is solar.
One other way to see if your tanks are full just lift em up...
works every time!
