Jan 18 - a day in the closet

Well, it wasn't really in the closet ... worse ... it was in the kitchen cupboard !

There's an open area behind the corner lazy susan under the counter in the kitchen cupboard that is our target for installing a point-of-use water heater for the kitchen. We run tons of water to get a little in the kitchen -- for the faucet and for the dishwasher. The installation of the on-demand hot water heater last year added another 20' to the run, so it's even worse now.

Here's the problem ...

1) I need power. There are three kitchen counter receptacles around the sink, all on the same circuit. The food disposer (garburetor in Canuck) is also on that circuit. Obviously the latter isn't used much.

It's a 20 amp circuit, wired with #12. That's good. The receptacles are all 15 amp receptacles. That's bad. We don't actually use those receptacles very much and nothing of any significant amperage, so that became my target for the power for the new heater.

The new heater is (will be, because it's on order) 1500 watts. I shouldn't have a problem. Beside that spot is the dishwasher, on its own 20 amp circuit, which was also a possibility, but I could easily see those running together and didn't want to have breakers flipping.

A side note -- another 20 amp breaker covers the microwave and another receptacle on the right hand side of the stove and yet another 20 amp feeds the refrigerator and a receptacle to its right. The bar area has its own breaker. At some point, when we re-do the kitchen, we'll also supply power to the island ... which doesn't have power now (major pain) and I might run another circuit for that purpose.

Of course all of these are setup with 15 amp receptacles ... hmmm.

The wire from one receptacle to the other runs right through that small space, so I cut into it, adding three boxes -- one simply a junction box, one a receptacle and another a switch, so that I can easily turn off the heater.

The wiring was the easy part. It did that last while the glue was setting.

The plumbing is in two parts -- plumbing the over pressure drain as well as the supply side which includes hooking the water heater or bypass outlet into the inlet for the faucet and dishwasher.

For the drain, I got a 1.5" PVC fitting that had a 3/4" inlet as well and with Sandy's help, we got that inserted. She was in the one cupboard attaching the drain after I, in the other cupboard, had painted the glue. Messy but short work, that was beat.

Most of the day was spent on the supply side. Even though we'll eventually re-do the kitchen, I wanted to do this "right", which in my mind means:

a) having a bypass (operational now, since there's no hot water heater yet)
b) being able to choose the supply -- hot or cold.

Up north, when I plumbed one of these, I used the hot water as the supply. I may very well change that at some point, because in reality we're heating little bits of water with the gas fired water heater that cool off before ever getting to the point-of-use heater. Using the cold water as the supply is probably much more efficient. I'm thinking the same thing here and will initially open the valve using cold water but if that becomes problematic, I can switch that and use hot water.

Plumbing both the bypass as well as the water supply swap involves many additional T's and valves ... it's a thing of beauty ! a thing of over-engineering ? We'll see. If the heater fails between installation and kitchen re-do, I'll be very happy that I've gone to the extra trouble.

Also, I setup the drain and supply sides to be attached with flexible braided hoses, so when the heater arrives, it should simply be a matter of again removing the lazy susan and attaching three hoses, plugging it in ...

That heater, btw, is an "online only" item from Home Depot. Other people sell it, but at significantly higher prices.

What a mess of PVC, CPVC etc. I used sharkbites to attach to the existing copper -- in and out -- so I didn't have to do any soldering.

I guarantee you that most plumbers would have refused to do this work or at least refused to do it the way that I wanted it done. It's such a small space -- I fit in there but most of them wouldn't !!

By the end of the day -- and this took me from pre 9am until 5pm -- I was wasted. Perhaps that was from breathing the glue ! I turned the water back on at 5:30 ... gently ... and there were no leaks. At that point the CPVC glue had had about 2 hours to cure.

Of course only part of the plumbing has been tested at this point -- up to and including the bypass. If I really wanted to test the rest, I could attach caps over the brass male pipe connectors where the water heater will attach ... but I'll leave that for now. At this point the cupboard has been put back together ... lazy susan and its contents back in place.

Sandy had taken a pork loin out for dinner but we went over to the SYC instead. The kitchen was a mess and I didn't clean that up until this a.m.

Today ... hopefully a bike ride.

Onward !