[Greenbuilding] Legionaires disease and water temperature

Nick Pyner npyner at tig.com.au
Fri Dec 30 20:31:10 CST 2011


I think everybody boiled the whites once, not just the Germans. My mother
did, I lit the fire under the copper, and Whakatane is a long way from
Wiesbaden. Modern detergents make it usually unnecessary, and I could never
advocate anything other than the usual cold water in the domestic arena, but
it is still sometines done in hospital laundries. Those are serious machines
that can dump water at 90C.  ( Heat exchanger heaven)

Down here in GodsOwn we don't have a choice - 60 for stored water 50 for
instant.  Solar-heated water is usually a lot more than 60 anyway. Electric
storage heaters are banned from new construction.  Gas storage is virtually
non-existant these days, and probably unavailable.

I was far from impressed with O'Brien's comments. That on gas heaters being
kosher at 49C because they heat the water from the bottom just seems absurd.
While your bath water goes down the plughole the wrong way, I'm sure your
convection currents are very similar to ours. Sediment collects in any
storage tank and the same can be said for stratification of the temperature
of the water, irrespective of the fuel that heats it. No comment on the
hydronic pipes, but elemination of stagnant cool spots in the tank should be
an interesting exercise.
Nick Pyner

Dee Why   NSW

  -----Original Message-----
  From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]On Behalf Of Reuben
Deumling

  Nice, Nick.

  I thought that Michael O'Brien's summary of the issue was pretty succinct.
  I didn't mean to imply that there was nothing to Legionnaire's disease,
just that an unqualified across-the-board 60C requirement for water heater
set points or 100C for washing white clothes is ill-considered, wasteful,
ideological.

  It isn't as if climate change wasn't also expected to expand the range of
well known diseases. Overheating our DHW is not an innocent requirement in
the larger scheme of things.

  (Bill's cousin)
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