Hot Water Heater Moved & Installed

One of the single biggest struggles we’ve had since moving into our house in 2012 is having hot water from anywhere in the house. That’s because our hot water heater had always been located in our garage. Our garage is not insulated, it’s not attached to the house, and the temperature is not regulated.

So for most of the cooler months, showers and baths are unbearable. I have arthritis so a hot shower does a lot to help loosen up my joints and so I’ve spent most of the past few winters feeling crippled and curled up in bed.

And even during the warm months, the lines were so far from the house that we would have to waste quite a bit of water before warm water was coming out.

So at the end of last winter, I decided I’d had enough. If nothing else but one things got done in 2015, we needed to move that damned hot water heater into the house.

We have a large pantry and we don’t utilize well so the space was there.

So over the summer we began the process of a bathroom renovation. And part of this renovation involved rerouting lines for the hot water heater (as well as doing some electrical upgrades to accomidate the unit in the house). The joke was on us though, apparently at one point in time the hot water heater was exactly where we requested it be moved- go figure (thank you whoever blew up our budget having that moved back into a sane place).

We are now in December. We’ve been working on this project for 5 months. We are finally finished with the work (minus some storage and decorative stuff in the bathroom, but that’s for another day).

And we have hot water! So not only will we be wasting less water, but I imagine our utility costs are going to lower, too. The unit won’t have to work so hard in the winter and because we’ve upgraded to a newer, more efficient hot water heater, it’s going to run more efficiently on the power it draws.

We’ve installed the Performance Platinum 40 Gal. Medium 12 Year 5500/5500-Watt Elements Electric Water Heater with LCD Touch Control Display (it’s a mouthfull, but with so many different models I wanted to make sure I included the full name) and we have the EcoNet Home Comfort WiFi Module for Select RheemPerformance Platinum Electric Water Heaters. Both are available at The Home Depot.

I couldn’t be a happier person right now. I aim to be a fairly earth friendly person so this situation is ticking off a lot of boxes on my checklist.

I am proud to bring you a collaboration between A Designer At Home and Rheem to bring you real time numbers on whether or not upgrading to a high efficiency unit (and even making the investment to moving a unit to a better suited location) will make a difference in your utility costs.

Over the next 12 months you’ll see a post here on A Designer At Home covering reports of my utility costs versus last year, as well as details about the unit we’re using and the econet system and collaborative initiatives to bring you information on ways to lower your utility costs.

I hope you find this collaboration a source of helpful information and that it helps you make decisions on everything as big as units to small changes you can make around your house to make the comfort in your home top notch.

We’re falling right into winter and I won’t be chatting with you much more until after the new year so I wanted to get a head start and share this infographic with you so we can start preparing for the cooler season.