Kweenie, The difference is that a fire is not usually a result of direct negligence on the management's fault. If it were then you probably could sue them. For instance, if an electrician told them they had faulty wiring that was a fire hazard and they opted not to fix it, and that wiring caused the building to burn down, the tenant's losses would be a direct result of the managements negligence, and I'd bet they could win. Same here, this was a result of negligence. I have a friend who lives in the same building his sister lives in. It's a highrise, but the units are owned, like condos. The bylaws state very clearly that the highrise management company is not responsible for damages to personal property. My friend's sister had insurance to cover her belongings. When the pipes in the building froze and burst, sending a virtual waterfall into her apartment, my friend told her not to even report it to the insurance company. Instead he threatened the management company with a lawsuit, because the damages to her property were a direct result of their negligence. They bought her all new furniture. If any damage had been done to my washer, dryer, or upright freezer when our maintenance crew incorrectly installed our hot water heater, causing the outlet pipe to burst sending scalding hot water spraying all over our utility room, you better believe they would have bought us new appliances. Would have paid our hospital bills to if my husband had been hurt running into all that scalding hot water to shut off the intake to the water heater. Basically, damages to tenant's property that are outside the apartment management's control, like storms, trees falling down, fires, are not the responsibility of the management. But if negligence can be shown to be the reason for the damage, you better believe they can be held responsible. You might have to actually take them to small claims court, cuz they'll calim that your renter's insurance is responsible.

I installed it all and plumbed it myself - Not a really difficult job . . . . maybe 3 on a scale of 5 The collector panel was $1K, the tanks were $600 for the pair, the circulator pump was $100, the differential controller was $200 and about another $300 for copper piping, valves, flowmeter and an analog temp guage. $2200 for the total system, give or take $100. We had no hot water heater to begin with, so we would have had to spend $300 anyway, so take away the $300 and the $400 in Tax rebates and the system actually cost us $1500 - I got $300 off my federal income tax and another $100 from the state My 'break even point' is about 3 to 4 years - It would be higher if I had paid another $1500 to $2K for a professional installation We're remodeling an old farmhouse, so we've never lived here with anything but the solar heat but the tag on the side of one of the water heaters says it costs $400 per year to run - It's a very high efficiency unit with 3 inches of polyfoam insulation, so a lesser water heater would cost more to operate. $500 to $600 per year is probably an average cost for domestic water heating per year for a family of four I REALLY don't understand why there isn't a larger push from the government on solar water heating. Unlike solar electric, or hybrid cars, this technology is pretty well perfected right now and the payback is much shorter than for just about any other 'green' energy source. It can be used in most places in the United States. The outside temp isn't a big factor in how well it works . . . . it depends more on how many sunny days you have If more houses had solar domestic hot water systems, we could make a huge dent in the total energy use of the country and just think of how much less fossil fuel we would consume Don

THANK YOU so much for your responses. Jake: I totally forgot about the fact that we need to update/upgrade our electric panel for our 1976-house. So any electric option is not viable. asolo: I read a couple of your other posts about tankless; I'm very convinced not to do tankless. joeplumb: our furnace (boiler) is designed to heat up the 1st floor, 2nd floor, and an indirect water heater. so to get a direct water, we'd wouldn't be utilizing our furnace optimally. We're in MA: very high gas and oil and electric prices. And forecasted to be worst this winter. sigh. We went with the SuperStor indirect stainless steel water heater, which is supposed to work great w/ well water. Yay for hot showers again. again, thank you very much.

I have a Triangle Tube Series 50 (45 gal.) in a 2,000 sf house with 2 bathrooms. My plumber said I should put in a smaller unit and I wanted a bigger one. We compromised on this unit, because he said a bigger one would consume a lot more energy. I take a 25 min shower with a 5 gpm shower head, and I get enough hot water from this unit, but it took some doing. The first thing I would suggest is to turn the temperature on the water heater all the way up. We have an L-shaped ranch with the water heater on one end of the house, and the master bath on the other (over an unheated crawl space). So we need to keep the water very hot to get enough hot water at the bathroom. The hotter the water is, the more cold water you'll mix in, and the longer your hot water will last. Despite this, I was still running out of hot water after about 15 min. As my shower valve doesn't have a volume control, I put a small valve on the shower arm which allowed me to slow down or shut off the water when I was soaping myself. This allowed the hot water to recover a bit before I finished my shower. The real breakthrough came last summer though, when I had a new boiler installed. The installer told me that the circulator pipes between my boiler and water heater were only 3/4", when they should be 1 1/4". He also set up the new boiler so that the water heater gets priority over heat to the house, and the boiler automatically heats up to 180 degrees whenever the unit calls for more hot water. Now I have plenty of hot water for a 25 min shower followed by a shave, even without turning the volume of hot water down during my shower. I think you should be able to get enough hot water out of this unit provided you use it to its full capacity. You may need to have someone do some work on your boiler though. One rule of thumb I live by, is to never let a contractor tell me how much water or hot water I need. Aside from this, do you have separate shower valves for your 2 shower heads, and are you satisfied with the water flow? Many newer shower valves limit the flow to 2.5 gpm or less. You can check your actual water flow with a 2.5 or 5 gal bucket and a stopwatch. If you're getting enough flow out of the shower arms, but not out of the shower heads, there are some places that sell shower heads with easily removable flow restrIctors.