Hot Water Plumbing Tips
May 24, 2009 by yoursydneyplumber
Filed under Hot Water Systems
Most homes have standard plumbing. While standard plumbing has been very useful to us over centuries, it is now time to make these plumbing systems more efficient. In today’s times of environmental crisis and depletion of natural resources, it has become even more important to consider options like efficient hot water plumbing.
In standard plumbing systems, there are separate pipes for cold and hot water. When you want hot water, you typically have to wait a few minutes before you get hot water and in the meantime you let the cold water flow to get it out of the way. We are so used to the practice that we hardly give it any thought.
But, this method of accessing hot water not only wastes water; it also runs up huge utility bills. This is because water has to be treated and pumped before it enters your home plumbing system. And, then the sewer water that is discarded from your home also has to be treated and pumped. Both these processes use up a lot of energy in the process. Energy required for this process releases greenhouse gases and adversely affects our environment.
Efficient hot water plumbing is an environment conscious design that can help you save both energy and water. How about taking on a DIY project to change your standard plumbing to hot water plumbing? You could certainly accomplish large chunks of the project on your own without any professional help. You may be required to call in hot water plumbing, tanks & system professionals if you want to completely replace your standard plumbing system with a full time hot water recirculation system.
But, switching to a hot water plumbing system has numerous advantages. Apart from the satisfaction you get from a job well done, you will also have fast and easy access to hot water and you will save thousands in utility bills over the long run.
In a complete hot water recirculation system, a water pipe has to be connected from the last fixture back to the water heater inlet. Depending on your current plumbing layout, you may even need to re-plumb some of the hot water piping to get the system to deliver hot water to every faucet.
Apart from changing your entire plumbing system to a hot water recirculation system, you can also consider other hot water delivery systems. There are many hot water delivery system options currently available in the market and their installation is a lot simpler that hauling your entire plumbing system.
Your Sydney Plumber is brought to you by Highlander Plumbing, Sydney plumbers with the experience & know-how to handle all your plumbing needs. Whether you need help with clearing a blocked drain, hot water tank installations, gasfitting, rainwater tanks or many other plumbing services…Highlander are Sydney plumbers you can trust!
Hot Water Heater Energy Saving
May 22, 2009 by yoursydneyplumber
Filed under Hot Water Systems
The hot water heater is one of the highest power consuming electrical appliances in your house. Typically, 12%-15% of your utility bill is contributed by your hot water heater. There are four main methods of reducing your water heating bills and saving energy. They are:
- Consume less hot water
- Lower the thermostat on your hot water heater
- Ensure that the hot water heater is well insulated
- Get an energy-efficient & energy saving hot water heater
Apart from these four main methods of energy saving, here are some tips to help you reduce your utility bills:
- Ensure that your taps and showerheads are aerating and low flow.
- Ensure that there are no leakages. Many litres of hot water could be leaking through a dripping tap somewhere in the house.
- The factory settings on most thermostats are unnecessarily high. Bring it down to a more practical setting.
- The water storage tank of the hot water heater should be well insulated. Else, you will lose a lot of energy in heating water. But, depending on the kind of tank you have, ensure that you follow the manufacturer’s recommendations.
- If the first 3 metres of hot and cold water pipes are well insulated, you will be able to save a lot of energy.
- Installing heat traps on your cold and hot water pipes will also help prevent heat loss.
- Clean your water storage tank on a regular basis to remove sediments, if any. Follow manufacturer’s instructions, but ensure that no sediment is allowed to collect in the tank.
While these are steps you can take on a daily basis to reduce the power consumption of your hot water heater, here are some long term energy saving tips:
- Most hot water heaters made over 5-7 years ago are likely to consume a lot more energy that the newer models. Even though most hot water heaters will last for over a decade, if your heater is over 7 years old, you may want to consider replacing it with an energy efficient model.
- If you are considering buying a new hot water heater, ensure that you look for the ENERGY STAR and EnergyGuide labels. These appliances will save you a lot of energy through its lifetime.
These hot water heaters are now considered the most efficient for energy saving…
- High efficiency gas non-condensing
- Gas condensing
- Electric heat pump
- Gas continuous flow
- Solar
To help your energy saving efforts you may want to consider getting yourself one of these hot water heaters.
Your Sydney Plumber is brought to you by Highlander Plumbing, Sydney plumbers with the experience & know-how to handle all your plumbing needs. Whether you need help with clearing a blocked drain, hot water tank installations, gasfitting, rainwater tanks or many other plumbing services…Highlander are Sydney plumbers you can trust!
Home Plumbing
May 19, 2009 by yoursydneyplumber
Filed under Home Plumbing
When it comes to home plumbing, you always have two options: call a professional plumber or do it yourself. Small home plumbing repairs do not usually need the services of a professional plumber. With a little effort, you can learn to fix the small repairs required in your house without spending money on a professional plumber.
When you start out to do your home plumbing yourself, start with small and easy projects. Try fixing a leaky tap or changing a valve before you take on more complicated DIY projects. Ensure that you are equipped with the basic knowledge required to fix the problem and only venture to solve the problem if you are sure of the correct procedures. If in doubt, you should consult a professional Sydney plumbing company before starting your project.
Before you start handling the small plumbing problems yourself, you need to be equipped with a toolkit. Start out with some basic tools like wrenches, spanners, nuts, bolts, tape, etc. Ensure that your toolkit always has torchlight and a spare set of batteries.
Before setting out to solve any home plumbing problems, first ensure that you have assessed the situation correctly. Identify the fault and the solution to the problem. Identify all the materials you will need to fix the problem and ensure that all of them are handy. Disconnect the faulty part of the plumbing before trying to fix it. Ensure that the water and power supply are switched off while you fix your plumbing problem.
It is also important to be able to recognise when you do need the services of a professional plumber. If and when you do decide to call in a professional plumber, ensure that you are getting the most energy efficient and long term solution. If you are going to incur the cost of a professional plumber, ensure that you get a highly skilled, qualified, licensed and insured plumber.
Your Sydney Plumber is brought to you by Highlander Plumbing…Sydney Plumbers with the experience & know-how to handle all your plumbing needs. Whether you need help with clearing a blocked drain, hot water tank installations, gasfitting or rainwater tanks…Highlander are Sydney plumbers you can trust!
Sydney Building Inspections Don’t Cover Plumbing!
May 14, 2009 by yoursydneyplumber
Filed under Sydney Plumber
Building inspections are always advisable before purchasing a property in Sydney, but did you know they don’t include plumbing?
Time and again we are now seeing customers moving into new houses and discovering major plumbing defects. The common thread amongst all of these people is that they say they paid good money for a building inspection prior to their purchase. What none of them realised was that traditional Sydney building inspections do not check for plumbing defects. They will never go to the level of detail that a Highlander Plumbing inspection will go to.
In our experience there are a few major defects that do not rear their ugly heads until well into occupying your new house.
The first one is sewer.
If you are purchasing a deceased estate or a “renovator’s delight” then the sewer alarm bells should be ringing. Usually a deceased estate has been lived in for its last few years by a single older person. What is the relevance of this you ask? This person generally has not put the sewer under any load. If the sewer was defective, the person probably got away with it through minimal usage. What do you think will happen when a young family with a few kids buys the house and moves straight in, planning to renovate as they go? All of a sudden the sewer now has four or five people using it instead of one. What happens? You guessed it, a big mess, a panic and a great deal of frustration from the owners who honestly didn’t see this situation coming.
This could have been avoided with a plumbing inspection prior to purchase. The Highlander Plumbing Inspection includes the CCTV inspection of the sewer as a part of the inspection. Sometimes one little defect such as a broken pipe could have been identified and repaired prior to the problem causing a flood.
Some larger old properties may have long sections of sewer that are a hundred years old. If those long sections are beyond repair it would be a good idea to know if you were facing an expensive renewal of the sewer prior to purchase.
Hot Water is another regally overlooked item that is taken for granted. Hot water heaters in concealed places that burst can cause huge amounts of damage. Is the heater going to cost you a fortune to run? Is it gas, is it electric? Constant low or storage tank? Mains pressure or restricted?
If we had a penny for the number of times a customer says “the hot water system at our old house didn’t do this!”
Shower water proofing is another thing worth testing. Before you get out the colour charts and start planning your colours we think you should make sure the shower isn’t leaking into the walls. If there is leakage into the walls, the paint will peel and you will be very annoyed.
Landscaping is another common thing done as soon as people buy a house. It is a way of stamping your own individual flair to the property. We think if you are going to spend $100-$200 p/sqm on pavers, then you better have 100% confidence in the pipes below.
We have had to dig up many beautiful backyards to replace broken sewer pipes. This could have been very easily avoided.
Having the information from a professional plumbing inspection from Highlander Plumbing Sydney could save you thousands of dollars. As we say: “Do it once, do it properly”.
Your Sydney Plumber is brought to you by Highlander Plumbing…Sydney Plumbers with the experience & know-how to handle all your plumbing needs. Whether you need help with clearing a blocked drain, hot water tank installations, gasfitting or rainwater tanks…Highlander are Sydney plumbers you can trust!
Green Plumber
May 13, 2009 by yoursydneyplumber
Filed under Sydney Plumber
Green Plumbers is an initiative by the Master Plumbers and Mechanical Services Association of Australia (MPMSAA). The purpose of this initiative is to create awareness about the environmental considerations pertaining to their work. Green Plumbers also helps enhance the skill and knowledge of plumbers to help them create more environmentally economical solutions for their clients. The Green Plumber initiative has now spread to New Zealand, USA, Mexico and Canada.
The goal of the organisation is to have plumbers across the world trained in the science of energy conservation. If we can make changes in our plumbing systems to make sure that they are energy efficient, we could be saving our world a lot of precious natural resources that otherwise get wasted due to inefficient plumbing structures.
Green Plumbers are trained to take into considerations the following criteria:
- Short term and long term costs vs. benefits
- Long term servicing, maintenance liability
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Latest energy saving tools and technology
- Government regulations as well as energy saving incentives
- Environmental safety as well as health and hygiene
As you can imagine, a Green Plumber is trained to not just provide the most immediate solution, but a solution that is carefully thought out and designed, keeping in mind energy efficiency.
Any licensed plumber can take the Green Plumber training. The complete training consists of 5 different courses and typically lasts for 32 hours. These are the 5 training modules:
- 1. Climate Care: This training covers heating and cooling devices, energy efficiency and abatement of greenhouse gas emissions.
- 2. Caring For Our Water: This training covers water efficient products and the latest technology surrounding water efficiency, efficient storage and sewerage systems as well as solutions to reducing household water consumption.
- 3. Solar Hot Water: This module covers technology surrounding solar hot water, information on government regulations and incentives, fitting and installation of solar water heater.
- 4. Water Efficient Technology (WET): This module covers reusable, recyclable water, rain water harvesting, greywater, septic tanks, treatment systems for waste water and sewage, etc.
The Green Plumber is a bottom-up organisation that is starting to make a difference from the grass root level. This initiative allows homeowners, builders, contractors and other plumbers the opportunity to create more environment conscious, energy efficient plumbing and water systems. Green Plumbers is attempting to create a complete shift in the role and responsibility of the plumbing community in managing the environment crisis we are faced with.
Your Sydney Plumber is brought to you by Highlander Plumbing…Sydney Plumbers with the experience & know-how to handle all your plumbing needs. Whether you need help with clearing a blocked drain, hot water tank installations, gasfitting or rainwater tanks…Highlander are Sydney plumbers you can trust!