The Great Archives - Marc's Musings

Tankless Water Heater 16 years on

About 16 years ago we elected to install a Rinnai tankless water heater which I talk about in this blog post.

No Problems Whatsoever. We have never had to have the water heater repaired and we use it, as any family does, ALL the time.

Cold Water Sandwich Effect is a Myth. At least it is for us. I have to say that I have never encountered this issue. All of my hot water pipes run through the cement slab that forms the foundation of my house. Those pipes must be piteously insulated because the water between the heater and the faucet cools at an extraordinary rate. Some people have tried to claim that this is the cold water sandwich effect, but it obviously is not. We had this issue of needing to run the hot water for a while for the 10 years we had old-fashioned tank water heater so it’s not a new thing. I do not find that, when restarting, ANY cold water sneaks through the tankless heater as I cycle it on and off.

Use the hot water normally. A concern I had when I first started using this technology, was that there were a lot of moving parts: Solenoids controlling water flow, valves controlling gas flow, and a blower fan. Even the parts shared with tank water heaters such as gas valves, are used much more often and frequently when the tankless unit is in use. I decided to just use the heater normally without consideration for this difference. I figured that, if this caused a problem, I’d just have to get it repaired and then change how I approach using the heater. After 16 years, I am amazed at how robust it has been and I have absolutely no qualms about continuing to use it normally and not worry about the mechanics of my heater.

The middle dial sets the temperature. Once set the water temperature will not deviate.

Get a Thermo-Balanced faucet. For temperature-sensitive applications such as a shower where a swing in temperature might be unpleasant. This applies regardless of whether you have a tankless or tank water heater. When there is strong demand for either hot or cold water – such as a clothes washing machine, a toilet flushing or someone else taking a shower in your house – it can can change the pressure of one of the hot or cold supplies and leave you with a brief temperature swing. We are fortunate in that our water pressure is ample so that toilet flushing does not affect anything, but someone else starting another shower *can* have an effect. Basically the Thermo-balanced faucet will instantly (and I do mean instantly) alter the pressure for the other water supply to maintain the temperature. The net effect is that the overall pressure coming out of the shower will shift a bit but the temperature stays spot-on and comfortable.

Plan ahead if you want to recirculate. A number of years ago I heard about using a recirculating pump that I could add to my hot water system which, in conjunction with temperature-activated valves at the faucets of my choice, would ensure that the water at those faucets would be hot and ready to go instantly. The problem I faced was that I needed to find a recirculating pump that operated with enough force to trigger the Rinnai heater. This did not work out for me at the time. There are now tankless heaters with this kind of pump built-in. So if you want this kind of luxury, make sure your tankless heater supports it.

5-Gallon Bucket, Submersible Pump, and some hoses

Do the Annual Maintenance yourself. There is only one maintenance task that is needed for my water heater, that’s to annually cycle 4 gallons of white vinegar through it to clear out scale from the coils and valves. The initial outlay is for a 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot, a pair of hoses (the kind you use to connect a clothes washing machine), and a small submersible pump (I purchased mine from Amazon for about $62 – Simer 2305 Geyser II 1/6 HP Submersible Utility Pump). I’ve performed this task faithfully starting about 3 years after the heater was installed. It takes about 90 minutes on a rainy weekend day and is VERY satisfying to clear tout the gunk that accumulates over a year.

Would I do it again? Absolutely, when the time comes, or if I move to a new place, a tankless water heater will certainly be part of my setup.

Lamicall Tablet Holder

Apparently I’ve gone a bit mad for this stand. It’s called the Lamicall Tablet Holder I counted back and, since early 2019, I have ordered a dozen of these great little tablet holders. Every time I see it come on sale I think of another person or another use for these.

Quality control is impeccable, I inspect everything I receive from Amazon immediately when it arrives and every single one of these Lamicall Tablet Holders has been scratch-free and works perfectly (the hinge on the stand is neither too stiff nor too loose).

My day job is working with mobile phones and tablets so I have 4 of these stands on my office desk alone. They fit Samsung Galaxy S and Note class phones, Pixels, iPhones, and iPads (10″ & 12″ Pro and not) perfectly. It gets them up off the desk so they don’t take up as much space (especially the tablets) and can be easily canted to whatever angle makes sense for the testing I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll have an iPad in one of these holders and be demonstrating another device in a second holder using the back camera while on a teams meeting or a zoom or Webex call.

Around the house I have a couple on my kitchen island so my wife and I can keep our iPads out of any foodstuffs that may be on the counter. This keeps the screen visible to me whether I’m looking at a recipe or viewing a youtube video.
I also have one I keep on a smallish end-table in my media room as there is just not enough room there to lay down a tablet (barely enough room for a phone) with the remotes, Kleenex box and dishes that are invariably already there.

Most of my devices are wireless these days, but for those that aren’t (I maintain legacy devices for backward compatibility purposes), you can feed the charge cable through the back and the gap in the actual device holder allows you to easily plug it in to your device. Also this is MUCH more attractive and less cluttered than having the cable snake its way around the phone to the bottom if you’re laying it flat on your desk but want it oriented properly toward you.

This is an inexpensive, simple and satisfying accessory that makes a great gift for people who already seem to have everything. You really don’t know you need one of these until you’ve already got one. My mother has already commented on hers several times and uses it whenever she is Facetiming with either us or her grandkids.

Oh, be sure to get the “Tablet” holder and not the smaller “Phone” version. I haven’t tried the smaller one but this works just fine for phones and why limit yourself?

So color me a bit obsessed, but I really can’t say enough good things about this tablet holder.

Oh, and I don’t get anything for linking to this product, so it doesn’t matter if you use my link or not. I just want to share something that just… works and works well.

UP Express Toronto is Low Key Excellent

I recently had the opportunity to try the UP Express in Toronto.

“UP” stands for “Union (Station) Pearson (International Airport)” and was apparently conceived as a premium service to shuttle people from the airport through the city of Toronto via a couple of stops taking you as far as Union Station in the heart of the city.

Fortunately the “premium“ aspect of pricing this service was recognized to be a bad idea and this service is now premium in every way except for the price which is extraordinarily reasonable.

On a recent visit to Toronto, Michelle and I took the UP Express one way from the airport to the Bloor station at a cost of CAD $5.65 each. The trip from Pearson’s Terminal 1 takes about 17 minutes.

After flying in to Pearson Terminal 3 coming in from the States, it is simply a matter of taking the terminal shuttle train over to Terminal 1 (a single stop, don’t ask about Terminal 2), making the short walk to the UP Express train station, boarding the train, and shortly there after being deposited at the Bloor station.

They have a great little mobile app with which you can sort out purchasing and activating tickets. Basically, you can purchase your tickets ahead of time and, just before boarding the train, activate as many as needed for the trip and, simple as that, you are on your way.

I originally purchased tickets to the wrong station (Weston), don’t ask why I thought I needed to be there instead of Bloor, and had to phone their customer service. This was an unexpectedly pleasant experience where in there was no hassle whatsoever at getting those tickets refunded so that I could purchase the correct ones.

Since I was not intending to rent a car on this trip and was staying with family, this worked out very well for everybody. Saving them a trip to the airport and saving us the hassle and expense of taxi or Uber. From the Bloor station we were picked up by our hosts, but we could just have easily have taken the TTC or GO trains to get where we needed to go.

The UP Express trains were clean, quiet and uncrowded (at least for our visit).

I would easily use this service again.

Kudos to AT&T Support for my Internet Gateway issue

On Monday (Dec 4, 2017) I recycled my AT&T Fiber gateway and my routers as I tend to do every couple of weeks. Only problem was.. the Gateway refused to come back. It just showed the power light as green and nothing else for about 3-5 minutes and then EVERY light on the device went to RED. It did this a couple of times regardless of power cycling, reset or full factory reset.

I decided to pull up AT&T’s internet web app to see if there was anything else that could be done (Reset something on their end perhaps?), but after some perfunctory troubleshooting steps the app concluded that a technician visit was needed. Not the best news but I knew my path now and was sure it wasn’t going to be a quick fix…

The app then offered to schedule the appointment for me. The first available date available was… today (Monday). Well.. color me surprised. The first available time slot was… 10 AM – Noon. Keep in mind I was doing this at about 9:00 in the morning. I figured this was a mistake but scheduled myself for that time slot see what happens.

About 9:30 I get a call from AT&T’s automated service confirming the appointment. 20 minutes later the tech calls me and tells me he’s about 30 minutes out.

Long story short by about 10:45 AM the same day I was back up and running just fine.

So credit where credit is due. Thank you AT&T for the swift response and getting me sorted out so quickly after that hardware failure.