Tankless Water Heaters vs Conventional Water Heaters
Tankless Water Heater vs Convention Water Heaters
First of all let’s explain the differences between the two. Conventional tanked water heaters are a tanked water heater, usually 30, 40 or 50 gallon storage tanks, with a burner unit using gas, propane or electric to heat the water to the desired temperature. A thermostat controls the burner to keep it at a certain temperature so it is ready to use when you need it. Most tanked units will provide you with about a 50-60% efficiency rating. As for hot water, your tank size will determine how many gallons of hot water you can use before it runs out and has to reheat the water. The one thing to really know is even when you are not using hot water, this tank burner is using energy to heat the water, spending your hard earned money even when you don’t want hot water.
A tankless water heater has no storage tank and only heats water when a hot water fixture is turned on. As a hot water fixture is turned on, the tankless unit fires the burner as the water passes through the heat exchanger it heats the water instantly. This requires a tremendously hot burner, almost three times the heat a standard tank burner puts off. 
Even with such a hot burning system the tankless unit will provide you with a 90+% efficiency rating. As for hot water, your tankless unit will offer an endless supply of hot water to multiple fixtures never running out. The one thing to know is, this unit saves your hard earned money and only uses energy to heat the water when you want it.
For a great two minute video on how this works please visit: http://crystalblueplumbing.com/sacramento-tankless-water-heaters.
A big mistake is that many people make, is they believe tankless water heaters provide instant hot water. This is totally incorrect. In both cases of tanked and tankless water heaters the water still needs to travel from the water heaters to the fixture wanting hot water. So the water in the piping system must be pushed by the hot water traveling to the fixture requiring hot water. The amount of water going down the drain before you receive hot water will depend on the distance from the hot water heater. One way to gain instant hot water is to team your tankless water heater with a Hot water recirculation system. This will provide you additional energy savings and majorly reduce your water usage.
Though the tankless water heaters purchase price is more than normal tanked water heaters, you will find that a tankless water heater will have lower operating and energy costs, which will offset its higher purchase price. Some basic things that can increase your overall tankless installation costs would be:
1. The size of the unit
2. If the unit is gas, propane or electric
3. Your Energy Factor(EF)
4. Available venting options
5. Sufficient gas line sizing
6. Electric Outlet, Recirculation system or Condensate line
Your hot water usage and lifestyle will determine your return on investment. But in most cases with the correct tankless application you will be pleased with you’re over space savings, endless supply of hot water, lower energy bills and reducing your carbon footprint. Don’t forget to always ask your plumbing service company about current rebates, credits & other incentives.
By: Tim Sjobeck
Pay Per Click Wars
Pay per click wars
So the other day I was meeting with a prominent Sacramento Marketing Company. We were discussing pay per click marketing. For those of you who have no idea what pay per click (PPC) advertising is, here is a brief and simple explanation of PPC. Wikipedia defines PPC as an internet advertising model used for websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers bid anywhere from fifty cents to twenty dollars on keyword phrases relevant to their target marketing audience. So basically when you search for something, the top three sites you see & the ads all down the right side have all been paid for, based on the relevant word search, and any time you click on those sites they are charged for it.
So our discussion was regarding a pay per click campaign that had showed over fifty clicks but had no impressions on Google analytics. This Sacramento Marketing Company suggested that someone most likely clicked on the ad and then bounced back to the search query and clicked on it again. By clicking the ad and then hitting the back button over and over again. Eventually the ad budget will reach its maximum, and the ad will disappear. Thus costing that advertiser for each click and yielding no results. In addition that advertiser’s ad will not appear again, till the next day or until they adjust their account.
This leads us to a compelling situation. If your competitor gets up every morning and clicks on all the PPC competitors using their prime relevant keywords, they will eventually eliminate their PPC ads. As a result, their own PPC ad will now appear at the top. In addition to costing their competitors big bucks in useless advertising costs they can position themselves at the top of the page at a lower bid for those same relevant keyword phrases and free from their competitors. Now begins the PPC wars era. Do companies need to hire an employee just to use up their competitions PPC ad campaign? So how morally wrong is this?
Think about the PPC wars possibilities. Not only will this escalate between competitors, but what about disgruntled employees. Your own employees can go home and blow up your PPC ad campaign, costing you hard earned dollars. How about X wives, husbands or X boyfriends and girlfriends getting back at each other. Or an unhappy customer getting back at a company they used and did not like. What if you just really don’t like someone who works for that company, does that warrant hitting their PPC ad campaign? I wish we could do this for our politicians.
Hey! I know, lets add Facebook into this picture. They already have groups and clans that team up together to accomplish certain goals. How about Facebook PPC Wars! People could organize together to blow up a company’s PPC ad campaign. With Facebook’s number of users and their instant newsfeed capabilities, a “PPC blow up party” could go viral in hours. This kind of war could flirt with a sort of terrorism we have not yet seen.
So the question I ask you is……..Does Google care? Should You?
Tim Sjobeck
Crystal Blue Plumbing, Heating & Air
crystalblueplumbing.com
I am not a politician; I am not in the military:
But as a plumber, I protect your world!
Without me, your world smells a whole lot different.
Your wife is HOT!
Your wife is HOT!
.
.
.
So buy her a brand new Air Conditioner from Crystal Blue Plumbing, Heating & Air. Seriously Sacramento is starting to heat up, if your A/C unit is older than 8 years, you could cut your A/C bill in half. Do the math, if you spend $200 a month on air conditioning. You can cut that in half…..$100 a month or $1200 a year! When you get your new air conditioning unit your Return on investment would be less than 4 years. That means in less than 4 years your making money, though you might have a cold wife! Stop sweating and and start relaxing in Crystal Clean Cool air.
Any Questions?
Customer Service?
Where has customer service gone?
This weekend me and my family were at a restaurant that I won’t name…..Olive Garden….oops. Typical Saturday night crowd. Expected a 30 minute wait so drinks were on our wait list. After our 1 hr wait and several drinks down the hatch we arrived at our destination. Salad and bread sticks would be our main meal, though we were yet to understand this. After devouring our yummy salad and two rounds of bread sticks we asked our busser to find us a bartender and put out a search and rescue party for our waitress and food. I called the local hotels for lodging in case our food was being held ransom. We got a brief visit from her, you know; one of those blink and you missed her. It was a good thing we had no radar gun, she was moving so fast I saw a toupee fly off as she rounded a guest table to avoid us. After our fourth round of bread sticks my grandma asked what she had ordered. We politely asked if they had a lounge area we could nap in while they searched for our food. I knew things were bad when our waitress started to walk around to the front of the restaurant to avoid us. (Though the extra steps could help her waist line) (to many bread sticks). Now customers that arrived 30 minutes later than us were actually leaving. Some actually offered to put quarters in our meter while we waited. We did get to know some of the other servers, in fact I think we got two “face book likes” for the website I built while we waited. About this time my grandma asked if she could wait in the car while we took care of the bill. My mom then reminded her we still hadn’t ate. When the food did come it was not warm at all. For a moment I was actually surprised when the food did arrive, I was starting to believe I was waiting in line at the DMV. I got the bottomless pasta, they must have been short on pasta and figured it would be an easy way to slow my fat but down. We did not receive one apology, not one discount or any visits from the management. Our total time including nap time from arrival to leaving was over 3 hrs, and let me tell you 3 of 5 of us upon receiving our food asked for to go boxes. So minimal time was spent actually eating our main courses.
I love Olive Garden but that was like watching Brian Wilson pitch! Pure torture. I can’t believe the low level of customer service. Where has good customer service gone. Remember customer service the way it used to be. Tell me your customer service bombs. Next time I will try to right about an over the top customer service experience.
Ask me about our new game with Bread Sticks!
Sacramento Clears Drains
Serving Sacramento
Serving Sacramento
Clearing clogged Drains with a Plunger
Clearing Sacramento Drains, First the plunger is a good drain-clearing tool, but it often fails to work because it’s incorrectly used. Don’t make the typical mistake of pumping up and down two or three times, expecting the water to whoosh down the drain. Though no great expertise is needed to use this simple tool, here are a few tips to guide you:
- Choose a plunger with a suction cup large enough to cover the drain opening completely.
- Fill the clogged fixture with enough water to cover the plunger cup.
- Coat the rim of the plunger cup with petroleum jelly to ensure a tight seal.
- Block off all other outlets (the overflow, second drain in a double sink, adjacent fixtures) with wet rags.
- Insert the plunger into the water at an angle so no air remains trapped under it.
- Use 15 to 20 forceful strokes, holding the plunger upright and pumping vigorously.
- Repeat the sequence of plunging two or three times before giving up.
Follow more upcoming “Sacramento Clears Drains” series in future posts.
Next week, we will look to help Sacramento with more serious toilet clogs.
Frozen Pipes
When a cold snap hits
Preventive maintenance is always the best measure. To prevent freezing and subsequent bursting of pipes by following the suggestions below. When Sacramento temperatures dip into the freezing zone, we are usually caught by surprise. Unlike areas that are accustomed to freezing temperatures, our Sacramento homes might not be protected as well. Even in areas that seasonally have temperatures maybe around freezing, you should still have all exposed pipes covered with foam insulation, especially those pipes in crawl spaces or attics. Most pipe insulation can be picked up at your local hardware store or box store. This provides you very inexpensive security. Most pipe insulation can be picked up in the basic sizes of pipe like 1/2, 3/4 & 1 inch. For outside hose-bibs always disconnect any garden hoses before the cold hits. For more extreme temperatures hose-bib cocoons are insulated shells that cover the outside hose-bib and do the job. Installing a freeze proof hose-bib assembly is a more effective option, but probably better left to the plumbing professional. If a severe cold snap hits and some or none of these things has not be done, don’t panic. Even if the pipes do freeze, you can thaw them before they burst if you act quickly. When temperatures fall very low, here’s how to keep your pipes from freezing:
- Keep a trickle of water running from the faucets.
- Beam a heat lamp or small heater at exposed pipes (hair dryers work well too).
- Set up lights in crawl spaces and attics, the light will provide a certain amount of heat to pipes.
- Wrap UN-insulated pipes with newspapers, foam pipe insulation, or self-adhesive insulating tape.
- Below sinks, keep cabinets open so heat can reach the pipes and unexposed pipes in the wall.
- Make sure to keep doors ajar between heated and unheated rooms.Make sure all members of the household know where the emergency shut off for the water is.
- If you have to leave, set the thermostat no lower than 55 degrees & notify your neighbors to keep a look out for your house.
- Finally, new technology offers many options for leak detection, new automatic emergency shut offs & leak alarms can save you thousands of dollars and major headaches.
I hope this helps…. Stay warm!
How do you choose the right plumber?
How to choose the right plumber?
1. Ask about prices, but keep in mind that the cheapest plumber isn’t always the best. You should be able to know the price before they start. Ask about regular rates and if there are any other service charges, like dispatch fees & after hours fees.
2. Ask if your plumber has experience with the job you need done. Plumbers come in two basic varieties: ones that handle emergencies, and ones that do new construction plumbing and installations. A competent service plumber that focuses on repairs, drains & emergencies may not be qualified to put an addition onto your home, and vice versa.
3. Find out if they are licensed, insured, and state-certified. Call to check if their license and certification are current & in good standing. Check to see if there are any complaints filed against them. For insurance, your plumber should carry at least the minimum liability insurance and have workman’s compensation. This will protect you and your home.
4. Ask about getting a written estimate. If your plumber won’t give you one, it may not be the right plumber for you. California protects consumers from being charged a certain percentage above a written estimate without signed consent. Getting a written estimate will ensure you won’t be surprised with a huge bill at the end of the job.
5. Ask for references. A good plumber wants you to know and see his work. Avoid plumbers that won’t give references. If you do get a list of references, follow through with a phone call to verify the plumber’s quality of services. Ask if the reference was satisfied with the workmanship, price, and if there were any communication problems.
6. Check them out on the Internet. Take a look at their website, read some of their testimonials. Are they members of the Better Business Bureau? Check a few of the local review sites, like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Insider pages, Super Pages & Sure West for Sacramento customers. Service Magic & Angie’s list are great sources to find quality contractors. Some customers have even checked out the owners on Facebook. One thing is for sure get to know your plumber. Find out what people are saying about them.
Asking these simple questions will help you to find the right plumber for your needs, whether it’s emergency services, plumbing repairs, or a major plumbing remodel to your existing home. You’ll end up saving money, time and headaches that can happen when you hire an unqualified plumber.
Hope this Helps!
http://www.CrystalBluePlumbing.com
Please call you’re Plumbing Experts Today!
1-916-577-5020
Save as much as tankless water heater without the upfront costs
Plumbing Blog 2
The huge rage is to get a tankless water heater right now. It sounds great to everyone, until the professional tells you the total costs. Once you have recovered and pick yourself off the floor. We all reluctantly settle for the normal water heater. Our dreams of lower energy bills & minimizing our carbon footprint go up in smoke. For a long time we have had no middle option between a normal water heater and a tankless water heater. Finally a middle option has evolved and is now available to us. Bradford White water heaters and Honeywell gas valves have combined to give us some great accessories. You can get more hot water for the money, higher efficiency, energy savings, operational programmability, leak detection and automatic shut off of incoming water supply. One of my favorite options available is the operational programmability. Most Bradford White water heaters will only lose about 1/2-1 degree per hour, that’s an average of only eight to ten degrees per night. So why are we heating that water all night? Are you gone all day while that water heater spends your hard earned money? Now you have the power to heat that water only when you want to. Get the savings of a tankless water heater without the upfront shocking price tag. Contact Crystal Blue Plumbing about lowering your gas bill and improving your overall carbon footprint.
Toilet Efficiency
Toilet efficiency
How much water are you washing down the drains? I find a lot of folks who want to save water but don’t want the expense that comes with it. What options are out there for us? Some companies are making a low cost conversions that allows you to take an old toilet and make it a low flow or dual flush toilet. Sounds like the brick theory to me. Remember these ideas;
- Couple of bricks in toilet tank
- Plastic ½ gallon milk container and put in tank
- Paint can in tank
Just a few throw back ideas from the good old days. Basically same theory, lower the water level in the tank to waste less. Now we change out the old flush valve and lower the amount of water that goes down the drain. Only one problem that no one wants to tell you, the trap size and shape has not been changed. So when you flush the old toilet with less water it’s not going to work as good. In most cases with solids you will still need to flush twice maybe three times. More often then not you will need to get your plunger dirty again. As a drain clearing plumber I should be happy that people are considering these.
Want a better solution upgrade those old toilets to a real low flow or dual flush toilets.
New toilets are flushing 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush) down to .9 gpf. Most toilet makers have several different models at different cost levels. There are several reasonable options to the water waste dilemma. Some simple research can save you some bucks and help you save some water. Check with your local water district about possible rebates as well.
For more info on how to save water: www.howtosavewater.info
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
