MattyG's Profile

@medusa12120: The fence wasn't replaced. They just added boards to improve the appearance.

My concern is it looks like they used non-pressure treated pine and haven't applied any sort of protective finish. It's going to start splintering and looking grey pretty quickly (unless that's Phase II to follow soon).

Not exactly answering your question, but you don't actually need hot water for dishwashing at all. Many people think hot water is more sanitary, but that's a myth-- you need very, very hot water for extended periods to kill any germs (i.e. autoclave).

Wasted electricity or gas to heat the hot water is by far a bigger problem than wasted water; by using cold you save both. In the past, soaps did work better in hot water, but now there are many soaps that are formulated for cold water. Even those probably aren't necessary; we just use regular dish soap in cold water, and it works fine.

I like the idea of tankless, but ripping out a perfectly good hot water system is very wasteful too. We use live in Florida and have a gas tank heater, so replacing it for $1k would take a decade to pay off the economic cost. My guess is the carbon cost is near neutral between the extra NG burned with our current system vs. energy required to manufacture and ship a new tankless heater.

One final comment on tankless: we had one when we lived in England (single unit supplying both hot water and radiator heat). Although it was efficient and small, it required regular, expensive maintenance. These systems are much more complex than a tank heater, and it's important to include those costs in your analysis as well.

After reading a recent article here we really considered going IKEA for our upcoming kitchen remodel. But, after a trip to the store to see them in person, we decided that although they look awesome in photos you can immediately detect a quality difference in person. My sister-in-law has similar (veneer) doors and also warned that any damage essentially ruins a door (vs. being able to sand and repaint solid wood).

They look great when new, and I love the quiet-close mechanicals (which I assume are standard as it was on all of the doors/drawers in-store). But in the end, we decided that, based on the amount we were spending in total for the remodel, it didn't make sense to cut corners on the cabinets. We'll have to find other places to save.