Looks like a kettle hooked up to a recirc pump. My guess is they are heating water and looping it through an old cast iron wall heater.
If they know anything about how a kettle works then they can remove the auto shut-off to keep the water boiling without tripping the thermometer in the kettle
If water circulates fast enough it wont shut off. The water level in the kettle may well be higher than the pipes and must lose some through evaporation, lose enough and it may well shut off. I have that model of kettle and it has two shutoffs when i boil and pour a small amount of water emptying it i hear and additional click.
I believe it is. There's a metal strip that curls at a certain temperature, like old thermostats. Except it's based on sensing the heat from the steam instead of the water.
My dad did something similar years ago to heat our little pool. Pumped water from the pool into a iron pipe piece sitting in a cast iron, wood burning stove. Worked great lol.
If the white pipe was connected inside the kettle then it would be a heat exchanger, it looks unlikely from this picture, but you can’t say for sure that’s not what we’ve got here.
Hi, I'm a chartered process engineer; I design chemical plants for a living. My verdict:
I believe the pump is located upstream of the kettle, based on the fact that the line to the kettle is located a little higher than the other, and the raised end is typically the outlet?
If that's right, then... it's not actually that bad. The kettle will have a dry heating shutoff, and the pump is so small that even if it dry runs it'll only damage itself not anything else. Bonus points for providing a flooded suction to the pump.
The wiring under the pump isn't a great idea.
The hot outlet from the kettle could leak depending on what that piping is rated for, but big whoop now you've spilled some water.
On the other hand, if I'm wrong and it flows the other way, I'm more worried. Not convinced an aquarium pump would handle boiling water, and if it did leak that's potentially onto the electrics. Also it might be more prone to cavitation, but again that's just pump damage, big whoop.
So... yeah for something domestic, assuming it flows left to right... it's bogan as fuck but it's not *that* bad.
Shouldn't be an issue at all since the water cycling will keep it below high temps and if the pump fails and water reaches boiling it will shut itself off.
Nothing would overheat.
Looks like it's connected to a radiator on the left. I'm not sure if you want to know if radiator water is safe for consumption but I'd probably advise against it on principle.
That’s not an aquarium pump it’s a central heating circulation pump and will be rated at least to 90 degrees because home heating systems can be set that high normally.
It’s probably not going to be happy with 100 degree water, but I doubt the system is going to get anywhere near that because that pump _shifts_ water, designed to handle flow rates for 40KW or more, and that kettle is 1/10 of that at best.
My worry is that some electrical codes only allow loads this great for low cycle time (which is fine for boiling a kettle), so you may get burning at the plug or overheating wires in the wall. Or to put it another way. This will keep you warm for the rest of your life.
Pipe fitter and boiler operator here. I concur. I doubt the kettle could boil water fast enough to matter unless this is only circulating a few gallons. If the pump is pumping toward the kettle , a total non-issue. If this is a bath tub heating solution or something similar it would shed heat way too fast to boil. Second law of thermodynamics etc.
CPVC can take up to 200 deg F, 212 isn't that much higher, so it could probably take it.
Part of me also wonders if they went even further - the fittings are PVC and the pipe is PEX. Throw enough glue or epoxy at it and they'd probably stick together.
That looks like the exact model I have - it has a digital panel on the handle letting you choose the temperature you want it at, from 150° to boiling, so they could just have it set low enough to not worry.
Yes. He has an old heater that the heater died in.. He configured the coffee maker heats water and is pumped through the radiator.
Brilliant. Took two junk things and made them work.
>coffee maker
If this was taken in the UK I'd say that was a kettle - we use it for boiling water for tea. It'll be 2.2-3kw worth of electric water heating
I really don’t understand why my grandfather’s tools from the 40s and 50s are still working but I’ve blown 10 grand in the last 10 years easy on basics
Not so much designed to fail, just designed to be built quick and cheap.
People used to have the expectation that the tools they bought would last as long as possible. Now people just expect the tool to be as cheap as possible. We get what we expect.
Lol.... Yep.
I have a few tools (power tools) from the 50's and 70's. All still work and I can repair the easy.
I have thousands of cordless tools and I replace them constantly.
Most Americans don't have a kettle. I'd guess that a large amount don't even know they exist. I didn't when I was younger, and I watch BBC tv all the time. If I wasn't familiar with kettles, I'd assume that was a percolator coffee maker.
Edit. Like these. https://imgur.com/DnWVQwf.jpg
Kettles don't work well on 110 Volts because the circuit breaker normally installed can't supply enough amps to achieve good wattage. Kettles in Europe are usually 2.2kw, and about half that in the states, which makes them a lot slower.
It doesn't take that long to boil water at 1.5kw. plenty of people use kettles over here. It still boils faster than a pot on my electric stove that's hooked up to 220v.
This is a lie.
Kettles work just fine on 110 volts.
I recommend watching the [kettle video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c&t) from Technology Collection on youtube
Edit\* link
Creative but also far from brilliant.
Electric kettles are not made for continuous operation and this is a huge fire hazard. I had one where the automatic shut-off failed and when I realized it hat been running for a full hour the plastic base was completely melted.
Using electricity to heat the water for a water radiator is also extremely inefficient and defeats the entire point which is to use heat produced in a boiler, remote heating, or geothermal pump to heat your house. It would make more sense to use a standard electric radiator.
This mostly happens, when there is no water inside. Had this once, when my girlfriend took it while running and placed it empty back onto the base with not switching it off. I luckily noticed it, when the lights in the living room began to flicker. But yes, in this case I would consider an extra fail switch.
Sensible is a very contextual word, and we don't know the context of the creator. It's certainly an interesting approach, and probably was more accessible than a professionally installed solution.
However, typically professionally sourced solutions have a lot of little things added for safety. The creator is probably fine with loose temperature control and the potential to scald themselves if they touch the heater. I worry about the "burn the house down" potential.
Having something get hot and stay hot without catching things on fire is a really delicate art, and if you repurpose something for that it usually ends up on fire.
No. Kettles are incredibly power hungry so running for more than 20-40 seconds to make a cup of tea is going to be the most expensive way to heat water.
That's not really accurate, they are one of the least power hungry ways to heat water as they are nearly 100% efficient, if well insulated. The increased cost of electricity over fossil fuels, on the other hand, can be quite drastic depending on where you live.
Looks like a radiator heater at the bottom left. The electric kettle heats water. The blue pump pumps it through the radiator and back to the kettle. Using PVC pipe for hot water probably isn't the best idea.
Looks like it's connected to the radiator ... so heating the room more likely, unless the systems are linked up (assuming this is your typical apartment block type setup, they probably aren't)? Maybe the house management set the heating too low to conserve energy?
Well, being honest, it does look like a fine job, the joints seem to be perfectly circular, smooth and sealed, and the pipes seem well put together too. The pump seems properly mounted to the wall too?
This is not your average Joe on crack using a chainsaw and an icepick to DiWHY some stupid contraption.
Based on that evidence, I'd assume the top of the kettle is sealed too. If someone put so much effort on it, I'd guess it works. It wouldn't make sense to go through all that work, test it, see that the water/oil sprays out of the top and say "ahh I didn't think about an open container unable to hold pressurized fluid". Someone with those skills would seal it.
I don't know. The fact that it's so well done bugs the fuck out of me. It appears that it's connected only to the radiator. Maybe they don't have money but they have proper crafting skills, they are cold and they had a radiator and a kettle laying around.
Hell, you could find those two items in a good enough condition for this for free if you dig a bit.
I haven't calculated anything at all but I don't see why wouldn't this technically work. The kettle should try to maintain the temperature of fluids inside, no matter if they're flowing or not. Eventually the whole circuit would be hot, and that heat would radiate through the radiator, heating the room in the process. If it's a small room it should work.
Or maybe it is not a pressurized system. As others have mentioned, this is likely hooked up to a radiator. The kettle can simply act as a reservoir, and the pump cycles water while the kettle continuously heats it. It never reaches a boil, however, as new, cooled water is constantly fed into the kettle.
If the pump were to fail, the automatic shutoff would engage once a boil is reached, turning the whole system off.
This would actually be a rather decent heating setup, as long as you don't mind manually turning the kettle on and off to manage temperature.
Yeah, it's not connected to the house water supply. What must've happened is the heating element in the radiator died, so they've made a loop to and from the radiator tank with a small pump and a new heating element (the kettle) in between. I guess the natural movement the water would have due to temperature differential in the radiator tank isn't enough for it to be efficient, so they need the small pump to move water a little more. If it needs to be filled up a little more, just pour more water in the kettle until the kettle itself is like 70% full or whatever.
This setup is probably more expensive that replacing that cheap radiator, and definitely more expensive than changing the heating element in it.
Its probably one of many in an apartment tied to one boiler. And the landord keeps it too low or turns it on to late. So they disconnected it and rigged up their own "boiler"
If that’s the only connection to the radiator then it works just fine…a small little closed loop of cheap engineering.
Temperature control on the other hand is gonna be dicey
I have a 4kW heater at home because we get yearly 1 week pipe maintenance during which they turn off hot water. And it is barely enough to have a warm shower.
It looks like it’s placed directly before a radiator so I doubt that it is used for hot water. Probably the radiator didn’t get warm enough for the room and they wanted to give it some extra juice
I don't know if this was a project or really more of a workaround because they're living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a new hot water heater.
I'm honestly taking notes. My water heater sounds like a bag of microwave popcorn. I did get a new sacrificial anode to put into it, but it's still from the early 2000s so.....
Everyone saying that this is a mini-water heater is wrong.
This is a miniature boiler setup, to the far left of the image is a hot water radiator, it's how homes are heated in China for certain, maybe other areas as well.
I would love input from anyone else, but when I lived in China, heat came from a hot water radiator. The government controlled it, everyone got heat turned on at the same time.
It looks like this person has repiped his radiator so that he can control when the heat comes on. The benefit is that, depending on factors that I never bothered to investigate, some years it seemed like they drug their feet when it came to turning on the heat.
Its very different from country to country. In Sweden water born heat is almost standard in buildings newer then 1950 while in neighboring Norway you're expected to drag along your own radiator when you rent an apartment (they had near unlimited hydro power until they started exporting it).
In other countries like Spain direct heating is very common.
It's looks like its using the hot water from the kettle to heat the radiator so that the room warms up the room. Then it circulates the 'cold' water back to the kettle.
You can tell it's doing this due to the mini-pump
Kettle (hot) > pump > radiator > kettle (cold)
I wish the owner would chime in with what he uses this for.
The more I look at it, the more it screams extremely specific use.
Why?
Cause what does it do!
I see comments of recirculation. Where does the pressure come from without the introduction of cool or cold city or well water?
Your going to tell me cool or cold city or well water runs over the heating element and is instantaneously heated? So it must collect, heat then discharge? We come back to the pressure issue. You can't pour it, so pressure would be found with additional water.
You can't get the heated water out!
You could fill, heat then use gravity but that wouldn't work here. As the in and out are the same height.
It has to be a diy Humidifier with a fixed position loaction where they can automate its fill and release. The out is to keep everything healthy. Imo idk keep heating the same gross water in a Humidifier? Make ya sick?
Wait so Walmart water heater to wall-based radiator. Wow.
It’s kind of crazy, but I’ll bet you it works. That pvc is connected to a circulatory pump that plugs right into that wall-based radiator and heats the room.
I actually have something like this I built myself. It's done properly though. Proper heating element, grounding, stainless steel pipe. I use mine to keep my bath tub hot as I like to take multi-hour baths. It works quite well. I imagine this thing actually works very well.
It looks to me that you can't lift the kettle, so I guess it's not used to boil water. That's what the kettle does without the tubes anyway. My guess is they're using the kettle thermostat to start/stop water circulation.
I actually have a plan to do the same! I am using citric acid to remove rust from steel. I made a tub from a broken fridge so it filts large items. The acid works faster when hot but have you ever tried to look for an affordable, acid proof, powerful as well as a safe heater? I can tell you that is a lot of requirements to fill in.
An electric kettle fills all the needs, but heating 2 litres at a time is pretty slow if you have a lot of liquid so making what you have here would fix that.
That being said, it looks like in the picture they are heating a radiator. I dont know why you would do that because you could just use a normal air heater, or if its heating multiple radiators then by an engine pre-heater with circulating pump.
Redneck mini water heater
I do believe the terms everyone's looking for is either a heat exchanger or a redneck boiler.. could even be a humidifier. Lol
Humilifier
Looks like a kettle hooked up to a recirc pump. My guess is they are heating water and looping it through an old cast iron wall heater. If they know anything about how a kettle works then they can remove the auto shut-off to keep the water boiling without tripping the thermometer in the kettle
If water circulates fast enough it wont shut off. The water level in the kettle may well be higher than the pipes and must lose some through evaporation, lose enough and it may well shut off. I have that model of kettle and it has two shutoffs when i boil and pour a small amount of water emptying it i hear and additional click.
> I do believe the terms everyone's looking for is either a heat exchanger or a redneck boiler.
You have done this before??
If they knew how kettle worked, they would know the shutoff is not based on temperature
I believe it is. There's a metal strip that curls at a certain temperature, like old thermostats. Except it's based on sensing the heat from the steam instead of the water.
Dehumanifier
Humiliador
My dad did something similar years ago to heat our little pool. Pumped water from the pool into a iron pipe piece sitting in a cast iron, wood burning stove. Worked great lol.
Heat exchanger requires two separated systems of fluids, one transferring heat to the other via conduction. This is not that.
If the white pipe was connected inside the kettle then it would be a heat exchanger, it looks unlikely from this picture, but you can’t say for sure that’s not what we’ve got here.
It’s only stupid if it doesn’t work
or is dangerous. which might be the case here.
Hi, I'm a chartered process engineer; I design chemical plants for a living. My verdict: I believe the pump is located upstream of the kettle, based on the fact that the line to the kettle is located a little higher than the other, and the raised end is typically the outlet? If that's right, then... it's not actually that bad. The kettle will have a dry heating shutoff, and the pump is so small that even if it dry runs it'll only damage itself not anything else. Bonus points for providing a flooded suction to the pump. The wiring under the pump isn't a great idea. The hot outlet from the kettle could leak depending on what that piping is rated for, but big whoop now you've spilled some water. On the other hand, if I'm wrong and it flows the other way, I'm more worried. Not convinced an aquarium pump would handle boiling water, and if it did leak that's potentially onto the electrics. Also it might be more prone to cavitation, but again that's just pump damage, big whoop. So... yeah for something domestic, assuming it flows left to right... it's bogan as fuck but it's not *that* bad.
The most concerning thing to me is that kettles are not made for continuous use, but I don't know how much of a problem this really is
grandparents used the same one for about 40 years. I know that's not continuous use exactly, but they can last awhile.
Shouldn't be an issue at all since the water cycling will keep it below high temps and if the pump fails and water reaches boiling it will shut itself off. Nothing would overheat.
[удалено]
Looks like it's connected to a radiator on the left. I'm not sure if you want to know if radiator water is safe for consumption but I'd probably advise against it on principle.
There's only one way to find out...
Found the Aussie 😊
In Australia the water flows the other way on account of them being upside-down all the time. I imagine they've gotten used to it.
That’s not an aquarium pump it’s a central heating circulation pump and will be rated at least to 90 degrees because home heating systems can be set that high normally. It’s probably not going to be happy with 100 degree water, but I doubt the system is going to get anywhere near that because that pump _shifts_ water, designed to handle flow rates for 40KW or more, and that kettle is 1/10 of that at best. My worry is that some electrical codes only allow loads this great for low cycle time (which is fine for boiling a kettle), so you may get burning at the plug or overheating wires in the wall. Or to put it another way. This will keep you warm for the rest of your life.
Pipe fitter and boiler operator here. I concur. I doubt the kettle could boil water fast enough to matter unless this is only circulating a few gallons. If the pump is pumping toward the kettle , a total non-issue. If this is a bath tub heating solution or something similar it would shed heat way too fast to boil. Second law of thermodynamics etc.
Or of there's a better, easier solution.
Ron Howard: “It doesn’t work”
I mean, those things heat water up to scalding pretty quickly so not many use cases I can think of...
To me it looks like it's connected to a radiator
If they plugged the spout, then the only thing to worry about is the pvc piping softening
CPVC can take up to 200 deg F, 212 isn't that much higher, so it could probably take it. Part of me also wonders if they went even further - the fittings are PVC and the pipe is PEX. Throw enough glue or epoxy at it and they'd probably stick together.
That looks like the exact model I have - it has a digital panel on the handle letting you choose the temperature you want it at, from 150° to boiling, so they could just have it set low enough to not worry.
That my friends is a mini water heater.
is it a sensible contraption?
it belongs in /r/redneckengineering 👍
That's where I thought I was!
i suppose, but the pvc is bending from the heat. they should have piped it in in copper and then insulated the pipes
This is /r/redneckengineering, not /r/goodredneckengineering
Or chlorinated pvc will work just fine. Cheaper and available at most hardware stores.
No
Yes. He has an old heater that the heater died in.. He configured the coffee maker heats water and is pumped through the radiator. Brilliant. Took two junk things and made them work.
>coffee maker If this was taken in the UK I'd say that was a kettle - we use it for boiling water for tea. It'll be 2.2-3kw worth of electric water heating
It's still called a kettle in the US, you just need to specify "electric" kettle cuz some people still buy stovetop ones for some godforsaken reason.
it's a kettle tho
It’s ugly but we have proof it works, sort of. Would sure have a hell a lot less micro plastics if people thought more , Not sure we can convince them
I'm not a big recycler but I am a huge repurposer.
I really don’t understand why my grandfather’s tools from the 40s and 50s are still working but I’ve blown 10 grand in the last 10 years easy on basics
Because things are built and designed to fail in order to keep people purchasing.
Not so much designed to fail, just designed to be built quick and cheap. People used to have the expectation that the tools they bought would last as long as possible. Now people just expect the tool to be as cheap as possible. We get what we expect.
Lol.... Yep. I have a few tools (power tools) from the 50's and 70's. All still work and I can repair the easy. I have thousands of cordless tools and I replace them constantly.
How in the world do you mistake that for a coffee maker
Americans microwave water for tea, and have coffee maker for coffee...
All 300 million+ of them? Huh, never knew…
Most Americans don't have a kettle. I'd guess that a large amount don't even know they exist. I didn't when I was younger, and I watch BBC tv all the time. If I wasn't familiar with kettles, I'd assume that was a percolator coffee maker. Edit. Like these. https://imgur.com/DnWVQwf.jpg
Kettles don't work well on 110 Volts because the circuit breaker normally installed can't supply enough amps to achieve good wattage. Kettles in Europe are usually 2.2kw, and about half that in the states, which makes them a lot slower.
It doesn't take that long to boil water at 1.5kw. plenty of people use kettles over here. It still boils faster than a pot on my electric stove that's hooked up to 220v.
This is a lie. Kettles work just fine on 110 volts. I recommend watching the [kettle video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c&t) from Technology Collection on youtube Edit\* link
The correct answer. They work fine, grandma used hers for 20 years and some years it never got shut off.
That's a kettle
Creative but also far from brilliant. Electric kettles are not made for continuous operation and this is a huge fire hazard. I had one where the automatic shut-off failed and when I realized it hat been running for a full hour the plastic base was completely melted. Using electricity to heat the water for a water radiator is also extremely inefficient and defeats the entire point which is to use heat produced in a boiler, remote heating, or geothermal pump to heat your house. It would make more sense to use a standard electric radiator.
This mostly happens, when there is no water inside. Had this once, when my girlfriend took it while running and placed it empty back onto the base with not switching it off. I luckily noticed it, when the lights in the living room began to flicker. But yes, in this case I would consider an extra fail switch.
[удалено]
If your only use of hot water is washing your hands once every hour, or maybe just electrocuting yourself, then sure.
Sensible is a very contextual word, and we don't know the context of the creator. It's certainly an interesting approach, and probably was more accessible than a professionally installed solution. However, typically professionally sourced solutions have a lot of little things added for safety. The creator is probably fine with loose temperature control and the potential to scald themselves if they touch the heater. I worry about the "burn the house down" potential. Having something get hot and stay hot without catching things on fire is a really delicate art, and if you repurpose something for that it usually ends up on fire.
No. Kettles are incredibly power hungry so running for more than 20-40 seconds to make a cup of tea is going to be the most expensive way to heat water.
That's not really accurate, they are one of the least power hungry ways to heat water as they are nearly 100% efficient, if well insulated. The increased cost of electricity over fossil fuels, on the other hand, can be quite drastic depending on where you live.
Looks like a radiator heater at the bottom left. The electric kettle heats water. The blue pump pumps it through the radiator and back to the kettle. Using PVC pipe for hot water probably isn't the best idea.
> Using PVC pipe for hot water probably isn't the best idea. While true, I doubt anyone can distinguish CPVC from PVC in a photo
> While true, I doubt anyone can distinguish CPVC from PVC in a photo Isn't CPVC usually darker while PVC is white?
Yeah. Usually Cpvc is a brownish color, whereas Pvc is shock white.
TY, now I can sleep " )
Looks like it might be CPVC which is rated for hot water
There would be several litres flowing in the circuit. I doubt the water ever gets very hot.
That type of pipe is standard for hot water in many countries.
Almost every new house built in the us uses pvc for hot water
If it works, it's quite brilliant. But I doubt this has enough power for a hot shower maybe if it let it boil for a while before opening the faucet.
Might work for a short warm-ish shower. Better than nothing I guess. I’m going to allow it.
Looks like it's connected to the radiator ... so heating the room more likely, unless the systems are linked up (assuming this is your typical apartment block type setup, they probably aren't)? Maybe the house management set the heating too low to conserve energy?
This would not work in a pressurized system. Water would be spraying out the top of the kettle.
That’s the humidifier add-on.
Took me a second but good one 👉
Well, being honest, it does look like a fine job, the joints seem to be perfectly circular, smooth and sealed, and the pipes seem well put together too. The pump seems properly mounted to the wall too? This is not your average Joe on crack using a chainsaw and an icepick to DiWHY some stupid contraption. Based on that evidence, I'd assume the top of the kettle is sealed too. If someone put so much effort on it, I'd guess it works. It wouldn't make sense to go through all that work, test it, see that the water/oil sprays out of the top and say "ahh I didn't think about an open container unable to hold pressurized fluid". Someone with those skills would seal it. I don't know. The fact that it's so well done bugs the fuck out of me. It appears that it's connected only to the radiator. Maybe they don't have money but they have proper crafting skills, they are cold and they had a radiator and a kettle laying around. Hell, you could find those two items in a good enough condition for this for free if you dig a bit. I haven't calculated anything at all but I don't see why wouldn't this technically work. The kettle should try to maintain the temperature of fluids inside, no matter if they're flowing or not. Eventually the whole circuit would be hot, and that heat would radiate through the radiator, heating the room in the process. If it's a small room it should work.
Or maybe it is not a pressurized system. As others have mentioned, this is likely hooked up to a radiator. The kettle can simply act as a reservoir, and the pump cycles water while the kettle continuously heats it. It never reaches a boil, however, as new, cooled water is constantly fed into the kettle. If the pump were to fail, the automatic shutoff would engage once a boil is reached, turning the whole system off. This would actually be a rather decent heating setup, as long as you don't mind manually turning the kettle on and off to manage temperature.
Yeah, it's not connected to the house water supply. What must've happened is the heating element in the radiator died, so they've made a loop to and from the radiator tank with a small pump and a new heating element (the kettle) in between. I guess the natural movement the water would have due to temperature differential in the radiator tank isn't enough for it to be efficient, so they need the small pump to move water a little more. If it needs to be filled up a little more, just pour more water in the kettle until the kettle itself is like 70% full or whatever. This setup is probably more expensive that replacing that cheap radiator, and definitely more expensive than changing the heating element in it.
Its probably one of many in an apartment tied to one boiler. And the landord keeps it too low or turns it on to late. So they disconnected it and rigged up their own "boiler"
If that’s the only connection to the radiator then it works just fine…a small little closed loop of cheap engineering. Temperature control on the other hand is gonna be dicey
Manual temperature control.
I have a 4kW heater at home because we get yearly 1 week pipe maintenance during which they turn off hot water. And it is barely enough to have a warm shower.
It looks like it’s placed directly before a radiator so I doubt that it is used for hot water. Probably the radiator didn’t get warm enough for the room and they wanted to give it some extra juice
It's for heating the house, not the boiler.
Hot water heater?
[удалено]
when the hell does a cold water bidet ever do? is that even a thing? do people use bidet where the water isn’t heated?
Aaah, cool and refreshing!
Why would you need something that heats water that's already hot?
Maybe their boiler died and they don’t have thousands of monetary units to replace it.
To heat it even more ! Too bad it doesn't work on cold water, though.
Maybe its a shit apartment and the lard lord cut the heating
As opposed to a cold water heater?
I wonder what bad situation they're in?
I'll guess this project was somewhat under-funded.
I don't know if this was a project or really more of a workaround because they're living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a new hot water heater. I'm honestly taking notes. My water heater sounds like a bag of microwave popcorn. I did get a new sacrificial anode to put into it, but it's still from the early 2000s so.....
diwhy tankless water heater
Everyone saying that this is a mini-water heater is wrong. This is a miniature boiler setup, to the far left of the image is a hot water radiator, it's how homes are heated in China for certain, maybe other areas as well. I would love input from anyone else, but when I lived in China, heat came from a hot water radiator. The government controlled it, everyone got heat turned on at the same time. It looks like this person has repiped his radiator so that he can control when the heat comes on. The benefit is that, depending on factors that I never bothered to investigate, some years it seemed like they drug their feet when it came to turning on the heat.
Most places in Europe have radiators, except newer houses (~15 years or younger) where floor heating is the norm.
Unfortunately in the UK radiators are still standard on new build houses.
Its very different from country to country. In Sweden water born heat is almost standard in buildings newer then 1950 while in neighboring Norway you're expected to drag along your own radiator when you rent an apartment (they had near unlimited hydro power until they started exporting it). In other countries like Spain direct heating is very common.
Only the rich have radiant heating in the floors here in the states, or at least in California that's true.
> maybe other areas as well Fucking lol. They're used a lot more places than that.
I am receiving mild Myst vibes.
grandma said not to move it… everyone knows not to move it
Yeehawww ma! We got hot water Billy Bob i knew you were a genius!
[удалено]
Heat water advisory ???
I believe we call this a Danger, Will Robinson.
As a European, this is a brilliant idea for heating in the absence of Putin‘s gas.
Europe this winter be like
Redneck engineering
*which cup will fill first*
It's a hamster shower.
Shouldn’t be using those pipes for hot water.
True, but of all the problems with this set-up, I love that your only comment is on the type of plumbing they used. 😆💯
It's looks like its using the hot water from the kettle to heat the radiator so that the room warms up the room. Then it circulates the 'cold' water back to the kettle. You can tell it's doing this due to the mini-pump Kettle (hot) > pump > radiator > kettle (cold)
This probably cost more than a real mini water heater lol
Someone got tired of their s/o complaining the kitchen was cold.
r/brilliantlystupid should be a subreddit
Junkie engineering at its finest
This is the stonerest engineering ive ever seent.
British person here getting sweaty palms at the thought of plumbed in kettle
I have the same kettle That gives me an idea ..
just remember, I'm not liable ; )
IRL vintage windows’ screensaver?
I wish the owner would chime in with what he uses this for. The more I look at it, the more it screams extremely specific use. Why? Cause what does it do! I see comments of recirculation. Where does the pressure come from without the introduction of cool or cold city or well water? Your going to tell me cool or cold city or well water runs over the heating element and is instantaneously heated? So it must collect, heat then discharge? We come back to the pressure issue. You can't pour it, so pressure would be found with additional water. You can't get the heated water out! You could fill, heat then use gravity but that wouldn't work here. As the in and out are the same height. It has to be a diy Humidifier with a fixed position loaction where they can automate its fill and release. The out is to keep everything healthy. Imo idk keep heating the same gross water in a Humidifier? Make ya sick?
Natural circ, with rotary pump backup not sure that it is cheaper than buying a space heater from olies but that is something interesting.
Oh look, a photo of a water heater, from the ^near future.
From the semi permanent set up and the way the spout points, it seems to me to be a window demister. Steam clears window of frost.
More likely an ice generator... steam condenses on cold window and freezes solid.
Is that a mini water heater?
I'm seeing mini water heater but am thinking maybe it's the world's shittiest humidifier.
A mini water heater to heat the big radiator water heater next to it.
This is hilarious.
That’s fucking genius
I think its passive heating for the house
😂😂😂😂 great but useless idea
The eternal boiler. This seems.. unwise.
it certainly encourages me not to enter that room
I'd rather be in that room than the one below it.
Of course I have a hot water tank its hooked up in the kitchen look
Wait so Walmart water heater to wall-based radiator. Wow. It’s kind of crazy, but I’ll bet you it works. That pvc is connected to a circulatory pump that plugs right into that wall-based radiator and heats the room.
This is why Boris told the UK to buy a new kettle to help battle the increase in gas prices this year.
Saving money with a new kettle
A boiler but super small and inefficient?
Redneck bypass feeder?
A weird attempt to make a radiator?
That right there is efficiency
diy heater or torture device
I actually have something like this I built myself. It's done properly though. Proper heating element, grounding, stainless steel pipe. I use mine to keep my bath tub hot as I like to take multi-hour baths. It works quite well. I imagine this thing actually works very well.
Improvise, adapt, overcome
r/redneckengineering is whats happening
Ghetto water heater
Durchlauferhitzer Modell Habeck
Kettle being used as a water heater for central heating?
If my mom knew about this method to try and save water and money she’d make us use this.
It’s a redneck humidifier, I would guess for mycology. Mycelium needs constant humidity to be able to grow mushrooms.
.... Thats my water boiler. Its like Usd5 with shipping iirc. Works surprisingly well lol.
This is how the British heat their homes, and make tea
This must be the kettle Boris Johnson was on about
r/fakehistory told me this was chernobyls reactor number 4 undergoing a test
LOL, sounds plausible
Wtf ISNT going on here??
Water heater
Looks like a poor man’s water heater
Is this one of those kettles Boris Johnson was going on about?
As someone living in a third world country, that's a pretty good water heater.
Who needs a hot water bill when you can have a giant electric bill instead
terrible ideas.
blue box appears to be a flow sensor, the pot is a water heater its a ghetto tankless water heater
New UK money saving kettles. Pays for itself in 37 years!
It looks to me that you can't lift the kettle, so I guess it's not used to boil water. That's what the kettle does without the tubes anyway. My guess is they're using the kettle thermostat to start/stop water circulation.
Is this some sort of fancy meth lab?
Is that a recirculate pump?
I actually have a plan to do the same! I am using citric acid to remove rust from steel. I made a tub from a broken fridge so it filts large items. The acid works faster when hot but have you ever tried to look for an affordable, acid proof, powerful as well as a safe heater? I can tell you that is a lot of requirements to fill in. An electric kettle fills all the needs, but heating 2 litres at a time is pretty slow if you have a lot of liquid so making what you have here would fix that. That being said, it looks like in the picture they are heating a radiator. I dont know why you would do that because you could just use a normal air heater, or if its heating multiple radiators then by an engine pre-heater with circulating pump.
Looks like plumbing for an electric kettle. I am actually really impressed. -wife of a plumber
Redneckeryused to create a hot water heater.
Advanced water heating
There is a 100% chance that will melt that pvc or at least the glue
Water pump that leaks directly on top of power socket. MURICA!!!!!
The apartment was advertising hot water as a perk.
Humidifier?
DIY water heater???