Replies

1. 
   Guest_ | Sep 27, 2000 10:13pm | #1

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   Is your toilet tank lined ? An insulated tank liner often cuts down a lot of the problem

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   Guest_ | Sep 27, 2000 11:28pm | #2

   *we always use insulated toilet tanks for well water customers.. well , not always .. just since our first job 25 years ago....the factory ones are best.. the kits are good too.... even with the fitting....

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   Guest_ | Sep 27, 2000 11:58pm | #3

   *Some time ago, a poster here said that he saw a toilet that was hooked to the hot water line (by mistake or intention, I don't remember). No condensation, and the ladies loved the pre-warmed bowl.

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   Guest_ | Sep 27, 2000 11:58pm | #4

   *Robert: I also have a house in the north woods with bone-chillingly cold water (38-40F) coming in. I wish I had run it through the radiant slab to take the chill off, maybe on the next house. I did put mixing valves on the toilet supplies and that worked fine without insulating the tank. You worry about the hot water not getting to the toilet tank, but if the hot doesn't get there, the cold won't either. Both will yield room temperature water warmed in the walls. But you will draw only half the cold water as you do now. If someone has used water in the bathroom before flushing, you'll get hot-cold mixed unlike the completely cold water you get now.There are other advantages to pre-warming the cold supply to the house. Faucets and showers won't be touchy to adjust and you may be able to turn down the HWH, reducing the scald hazard. Several ways it could be done:A semi-solar pre-heat tank as you mention. For the sweating toilets, you could just bypass it in winter. The indoor humidty is probably low enough during the heating season so that the toilets don't sweat much if at all.A standard electric hot water heater (for the cold side only) with the thermostat set on "vacation".A tempering valve to mix cold with hot. You might be able to find something that low (50-60F) among radiant floor supplies, but you'd probably need to modify one by bending or cutting the bimetallic element inside.

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   Guest_ | Sep 28, 2000 03:50pm | #5

   *Robert-A fairly quick and easy way to warm the supply to the "sweaters:"Get a couple yards of small diameter refrigeration copper, 1/4 or3/8". Form it into a coil by wrapping it around a wine bottle, thereby creating a heat exchanger. Plumb this in-line with the toilet supply in such a way that it can sit in a pail or container of room temp. water. The idea here is fairly obvious, the supply en route to the johntank is detoured through the heat exchanger wherein heat exchange between the cold well water and room temp. water in the bucket takes place. If you don't have 1.6 gal./flush toilets, get them. A similar effect could be generated by mounting a small (hopefully somwhat ornamental) oil-cooler type radiator above the toilet and plumbing it like the above idea.Both approaches will restrict flow to the fixture and this is a good thing... as protracting stay in the radiator/exchanger increases equilibration between cold well water and room temperature. However, this will also mean longer recycle time (one reason to update toilets if you don't already have 'em.) This is also why you would have to take a substantially different approach if you were considering tempering the entire supply

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   Brian_Riordan | Sep 28, 2000 04:10pm | #6

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   There's always the outhouse approach.

   Brian

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   Guest_ | Sep 29, 2000 02:35am | #7

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   Had to follow-up Brian's thought with a bit of medical trivia. Until the turn of the last century (1900) poisonous spider bites were vastly more common than they are nowadays. The majority of them occurred on male genitalia, that being what projects furtherest into an outhouse. The condensation problem would be solved but there'd be black widows (for you in the lower 48) and splinters to deal with. At -40(F or C) the trick is to use a seat made of blue foam - it is far less conducting and has a lower heat capacity than wood.

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   Guest_ | Sep 29, 2000 05:17am | #9

   *I'm curious. Some of the new 1.6 gal toilets have a "tank" inside the tank (when you take the lid off, it looks like a bomb). I would think that that tank would sweat quite a bit less than a conventional tank.Yes?No?Beckman, you idiot, what you sawi wasa bomb!Rich Beckman

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   Robert_Hyatt | Sep 29, 2000 05:17am | #8

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   I have a summer cabin in a wooded area which has a well for water supply. The water temperature of the well is so cold that I most always have significant condensation problems on toilet tanks, toilet bowls, pipes and sediment filter. The floors under these areas have standing water most of the time and especially if there are a lot of people using the facilities. I have had recommendations about mixing valves on the toilet but I don't believe the hot water would ever get to the tank to do any warming due to the distance from the heater to the toilets. I also believe the insulating kits for tanks could not do a total job because of all the fitting that is required. I think there would be too much uninsulated surfaces to be effective.
   My thought was that if I could warm up the well water before it got into the inside piping system I would have this licked. An external tempering tank on a sunny side comes to mind. It would need to be bypassed during below freezing periods. An electric immersion heater in the tank might assist the process during heavy use. The floor is going to be ruined if I can't get this under control.
   Any thoughts?