Water
Below is a photo of our new tankless water heater. It is an Aquastar 240FX, also known as a Takagi TK-1. It stores no water, and only heats water when you need it. It has no pilot light and is activated when a hot water tap in the house is turned on. Within seconds we have hot water at an extremely stable temperature and it never runs out. It uses a 165,000 BTU natural gas burner and a heat exchanger to heat a little over 5 gallons of hot water per minute. It will heat enough water for both of our showers and our washing machine all at the same time. With our remote control we can set it to any temperature between 100 and 168 Farenheit. For showers we like 111 degress and for washing clothes and dishes we set it at 122.
So far we've seen our natural gas usage dive to 6 therms per month. This is compared to 70-100 therms per month (in the cold months) before we heated our house with the pellet stove and had the new water heater. The Aquastar is about twice as efficient as a conventional gas water heater and should last a lifetime. It uses much less space and saves energy and money, not to mention, it creates less pollution. It cost $900 and about $600 to install. It should pay for itself in 3 or 4 years.
We are also saving rain water in our pair of 60 gallon wine barrels. We have diverters in the down spouts on the back of the house to fill up the wooden barrels. We use the water for our plants in the dry months of the year.
New tankless water heater
Old water heater
Rain water storage barrel