One of the first projects for this trip was to get a washer/dryer installed. It would have happened the last trip but we discovered after ordering a stack unit and having to return it, that the utility closet was only 27-1/2″ deep. Doh! Who thought that a utility closet this deep was a good idea? And with a bedroom closet on one side and a hall on the other, there was no making room. We did a lot of searching and measuring but could not find a stack unit that would fit and still allow the bi-fold doors to open. In the end we settled on a GE unit that was an almost fit facing out. We contemplated putting the unit in sideways but the water lines for the hot water jutted out too far to allow the dryer door to open. Clearly the bi-fold doors were going to have to be moved. In the end I moved the track out 2-1/2″ from the back wall and 3″ towards the living room to allow the bi-fold doors to clear everything. Fortunately the hall is wide enough that it is not noticeable at all.
The other project was to remove the hot water heater that had rusted at the bottom and replace it with an on-demand unit. I really lucked out with the installation since there was a switch for the old hot water heater located in the wall directly behind the breaker panel. I was able to run the wiring from the unit directly into the panel and hook it up to the breaker with no additional wiring. What luck! I really wasn’t looking forward to trying to fish an 8 gauge wire through the metal conduit to replace the smaller 10 gauge wire that the old hot water heater took. About the hot water unit, we chose the Eco-smart ECO-8 for its smart performance. The unit adjusts the electricity usage based on the speed of the flow requirements rather than just the flow itself. That way a light demand for hot water doesn’t have the unit pulling full power like a standard unit does. One nice thing about living in Puerto Rico is that because the ground is warm all of the time, the water stays at about 70 deg. That means that it doesn’t take much heat for a comfortable shower. Plus, with the higher ground water temperature the unit should perform much better than in a northern climate where the ground temperature stays much colder year-round like at our house in New Jersey.
In fact, we wound up turning the setting down from the factory set 125 to 110 deg. because at a light flow for a single shower, the unit would start to cycle on/off and the shower temperature would fluctuate. Now with the lower temperature setting you tend to add more hot water into the shower mix and this additional flow keeps the unit on constantly and the water stays the same. This makes so much more energy sense when heating hot water. It’s only working when you need it and it never runs out of hot water. Plus, as an added bonus, we now have plenty of room where the old hot water heater was to put in a pantry to replace the cabinet that we lost to the termites-and yes, that’s our temporary dish washing station setup. Our sink was disconnected and on the front balcony at this moment. But fortunately, everything works out in the end!