Several things:
My experience with on-demand water heaters is that you need enough flow for
the demand sensor to react. I have had trouble with those when using
low-flow heads, and that may be why the restrictors were removed. The water
heater that formed my experience was a propane unit in an off-grid house on
an island off Cape Cod (no, not Nantucket), and they had to run a generator
to fill up a rather large pressure tank, from which they would draw water
for as long as it lasted, and then they'd have to start the generator and
fill it up again. Everything was low flow.
I also use a Navy shower as Rob describes: Water on, get wet, water off.
Soap up, shampoo in hair, get clean. Water on, rinse, water off. With
endless hot water from a city connection and on-demand water heater, I
think I would need a continuous sewer hookup. The Redhead, when she can be
convinced to used the coach shower at all (she prefers the campground
shower, for some reason), has been perfectly willing to do likewise. (When
she washes her hair--all bets are off--but then the electrical supply is
also an issue.) But I've learned to depend only on coach water, and not
city water.
I've come to the conclusion that a full-time water hookup is asking for
trouble. I have lost one faucet connection, resulting in a puddle under the
coach that stopped growing only when I turned off the pump. With a city
water connection, I might not have noticed all day or all night. A leak
when on tank water is a 30-gallon problem. A leak on city water might be a
3000-gallon problem. At Mansfield last year, I had the uphappy duty to
report to KenHen that a city water hose was leaking so bad that the ground
in front of his coach was a growing lake rather than a drying one (the
first day of that rally was...moist). Then there's the issue that the
plumbing sees 25-40 psi on the coach pump, but maybe much higher on city
water, even with a regulator.
In a campground with full hookups, it's easy enough to pull out the
macerator hose and pump the waster tank into the sewer, and then use the
city water to refill the water tank.
I use my water tank as an indicator of when I need to empty my waste tank.
When water starts to get low, I figure it's going somewhere. Time to empty.
Ken can't tolerate the idea of a combined tank, because he's never sure
when one or the other of them will be full, and having city water running
continuously means they will get full more quickly and unconsciously, it
seems to me.
Rick "who uses his white hose only for filling, or for flushing the
freshwater tank" Denney
> Rob,
>
> My coach has a 16 gallon gray tank, and a 23 gallon black tank. My shower
> head has all the water restrictors removed, so it moves a lot of water. And
> the tankless water heater provides never ending hot water(as long as you
> have water). So taking a shower in my coach is no different than taking a
> shower in ones home. Except for the elbow room!
>
> I have not had a chance to measure how many gallons of water one would use
> while showering in my shower, but it has to be more than 16 gallons. I
> assume my water flow with a 50 lb water regulator inline is at least 3.5
> gallons per minute(and that's a wag). So a 5 minute shower will drain 17.5
> gallons. Even a 2 gallon a minute flow only gives one a 8 minute shower. I
> can shower within these parameters, but the ladies??? And I want to make it
> as comfortable for them as possible.
>
> So that's why I would need some sort of on switch for the macerator. I
> don't have the the large holding tanks that you have. But if my tanks ever
> go
> out, I'm going with the large single tank.
>
> A float system inside the tank to tell the macerator to come on line
> automatically would be nice! Hint, hint!!
>
> Scott
>
>
> --
> Scott Nutter
> 1978 Royale Center Kitchen, Patterson 455, switch pitch tranny, 3.21 final
> drive, Quad bags, tankless water heater.
> Houston, Texas
>
> _______________________________________________
> GMCnet mailing list
> Unsubscribe or Change List Options:
>
http://list.gmcnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gmclist_list.gmcnet.org
>
--
'73 X-Glacier 230 "Jaws"
Northern Virginia
Offlist email: rick at rickdenney dot com
