I wash and rinse my jars and then place them into a 200F oven just as 'afeisty1' from St. Louis does. Using an oven at 200F gives me sterilized jars in 10 minutes and keeps the jars dry and hot as long as I need them to be. I just leave them in the oven, at the 200F until I am done canning for the day. I quite often make a few batches of salsa in the morning and so, will load up the oven with jars at the beginning. I can also place as many or as few jars in the oven as I wish to. Around here, I need to conserve water, so have never used the dishwasher to 'sterilize' or heat the jars. Using the oven gives me a consistant temperature for the jar (I was just reading above about all the complaints about the dishwasher cooling off the jars before you are ready to pack them). My dishwasher also may have little particles left in it from the last wash cycle that I would prefer to not get onto or left in my jars. Using the oven is 100% guaranteed to work all the time. I place my lids into a small pot (back right element) and bring to a boil, then turn it to minimum or off depending upon how soon the salsa or jam or whatever is going to be ready to pack. I do so just to get the rubber soft on the lids, since the BWB will sterilize them as it processes my salsa. If I have forgotten about the lids, I occasionally also have just washed them and used them that way immediately because I know the BWB will soften and sterilize the lids as the product processes in the waterbath. The canner/large pot with water is on one large element (back left) slowly coming to a boil, while the salsa or whatever I am canning is being heated in another pot on the other large element (front right). I have a large old fashioned enamel serving plate that I use to pack on. I place that on my stove, over the front left area and pack all the jars on it, so as not to get the stovetop messy with spills as I pack the jars. I take a jar out of the oven, place it on the enamel plate, fill the jar, wipe the jar rim and place the lid and ring on the jar, tighten gently, place the jar into the boiling water in the canner for the time allotted for the type of canning I am doing. The level of the boiling water in the BWB is 1" below the lid of the jar. As the water boils, steam is produced. The steam coming out of the water is hotter than the boiling water (simple science)and this steam is what will sterilize the lid and the top of the jar that is not in the water. Keeping the water 1" below also keeps extra water from coming into the jar as it is being processed since the lid does not seal down tight until after removal from the hot water bath. Brenda

if a shower is taken for 30 minutes.thay would be the 75 gallons of water.. sounds right but its not..the heater will actually give you only about 50-60 gallons of not water because the tank is filling with cold as you use the hot it is also mixing so..if you take a shower for 30 minutes you will deplete the heater, then it needs to reheat the water. but the next person jumps in the shower. he will get cooler hot water and less of it..it all boils down to the length of showers and how lon inbetween them. when your house was built a misunderstand of a water heater system happenrd instead of a huge heater seperat heaters for different baths would have been the way to go this is also the reason of your high gas bill you have a hugh vessal of water, the gas has got to keep that vessal at the temp you want it..every time you use hot water the heater has got to come on and heat up the water to thee desired temp. a larger vessal will cost more than a smaller vessal to keep warm.. my opinon..water heater to big...need to split the system upinto 2 systems,and..with the price of fuel.the way it is now. i suggest to switch to 2 50 gallon electric heaters AND the heaters get put on timmers. if you both work heater off 9pm-5am on 5am-8am off8am-4pm something like that the ages of your children also have a big factor in all of this. teen agers stay in the bathroom or on the phone i never thought i would be telling people to go with elec water heaters. but my fuel price went up ti $4.a gallon a few mths ago. went down..but i think it will go back up

I had a conversation with a local pro, and he believes adding a mixing valve and turning the aquastat up from 100* to something like 140* will do wonders. He said it's normal in any water heater to have much higher temps at the top and lower at the bottom, with the average around the aquastat setting, meaning we have ours turned way down. I'll give that a try. On the DHW priority wiring, I'm having a little difficulty finding straightforward info. Most diagrams/discussions include so many references to controllers and various models of components that I can't tell what the basic schematic should be. Here is my current setup:We have a single circ pump controlled by the boiler control. I just learned that the "DHW End Switch" terminal in my boiler goes to the HydroStat controller and only bypasses the thermal targeting in order to get full power from the boiler during DHW demand. My plan now is to simply add a DPDT relay (in red below) with the coil powered by the aquastat, that disconnects the signal to the two heating zone valves from their thermostats. This will will close those valves while the DHW is heating and create the priority setup. Anyone see any problems with this setup?

This was one of my unmet goals in our kitchen remodel, as I hated wasting water waiting for it to get hot. I didn't see why a small tankless heater (say an Eco 11) under the sink wouldn't work, but the contractor and electrician talked me out of it, saying that running the 220 wiring and upgrading electrical, etc., would be cost-ridiculous and code still requires two water lines for hot and cold. We ended up with a recirculation loop from the main tankless heater, but in order to get the timer to work on this model (Navien) you also have to buy a remote and no one has gotten back to me with the cost of that so it's running 24/7 and the water still isn't instantly HOT like I'd like. First world problems, but still . . . I've also read about small tanked water heaters that give you a few gallons of immediate hot water that'll suffice until the main heater gets hot water to the sink, but they take up more real estate.