Yea! what ever happened to "Take only pictures. Leave only footsteps." ?

I mean, imprinting "JPL" in morse code over and over in the martian dust counts as footsteps, I guess, but....

coldwetdog - have you ever checked out http://builditsolar.com/ ?

a kazillion homemade solar designs, including a lot of variations on a simple drain-back system which doesn't require antifreeze, but instead uses an unpressurized system that simply turns off the circulator pump and lets the water drain out of the collector and back into the insulated holding tank under situations where you would face freezing or heat loss...

i don't think that 25 year figure is correct. there seems to be quite a bit of FUD on the net about 'useful life' but this seems to be the only way the manufacturers can have the economics make sense. really, you have to look at warranties to get a sense of real world lifetimes.

i just took a quick and unscientific survey of the internets, and the tankless designs i saw have 1 year labor and 5 years parts warranty. i very much doubt that the units will last 20 years past their warranty period without continued repair.

my personal experience is that tankless heaters are very fussy and need much more maintenance than a tank heater, which needs almost none besides the replacement of the sacrificial electrodes occasionally, and then only if you want the tank to last far past the 10 year warranty.

one site i saw talked about a 20 year 'useful life' of the tankless heaters, but went on to explain that anyway when things do break, every single part is repairable or replaceable. unfortunately, at current plumber and parts cost, this can easily effectively triple or quadruple the unit's initial cost. also, at least rinnai, a major japanese manufacturer, says the units should be inspected and maintained every year, so you can add *at least* ( $100 * expected service life in years) to the cost of the units. that tank heater with the 10 year life and no service requirements is starting to sound quite a bit better, yes?

in summary, i think your figures are wrong- the info on the net, as well as my personal experience seem to suggest that tankless is a very expensive alternative.

again, a better solution is to insulate, consider solar (homemade equipment can set you up with a system to heat water and your house for under $1000!), and look at other, more cost effective technologies such as grey water heat recovery systems (http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/drain-water-heat-recovery), which recover much of the heat from baths/showers, the biggest hot water use in a house, and have potentially only a couple of years payback.

i do wonder where you got that 25% increased efficiency figure, as that seems somewhat oversimplified as well.

there is way too much emotion in the energy conservation world. often the most effective solutions are not the sexy ones.

actually, on demand water is only slightly more efficient than a well insulated water tank heater, and i think the tradeoffs make it not worth the switch. effectively, the tank acts as an energy storage system, which means that you can use a much slower flow of energy over a longer time to heat the water.
this instantaneous demand requirement means that the equipment is much more complicated and expensive to make, needs regular servicing, and has a shorter lifetime, meaning even more manufactured costs, not to mention reinstallation costs. also, since instantaneous heating demands are *much* higher than conventional heater requirements, often a new exhaust flue, and sometimes even a new incoming gas pipe of larger size must be run for the install.

it is more important to make sure your existing heater and all your hot water pipes are very well insulated, and if you really want to spend money in pursuit of efficiency, get a solar water heating system if your climate and situation allow.

in order of importance, fragility, price and density.

put some spare mattresses on the floor/sides of the uhaul and put your servers down there. next to each other. (you do have mattresses, right? you're a retreat center and a big fire is coming...)
next desktop boxes, lined up next to each other.
on top networking and ip phones, combined into a few bags/pillowcases etc. these, particularly the phones are light and wont damage each other.
next screens, wrapped in blankets and stabilized. you'll find the screens most fragile, and requiring the most careful packing, but they are also not so expensive to replace so don't worry too much.

come to think of it, you probably can throw some meditation pillows in there between the screens and anywhere else you need them.

that should give you a fast pack of everything critical. you also hopefully have made offsite backups, though.

Actually, it isn't. In 1844, in the interests of segregating passenger train and road traffic, a rail tunnel was built under the roadbed of Atlantic Avenue, in what was then the independent city of Brooklyn, New York. There is a reply to the OP suggesting that Liverpool has some earlier tunnels than this, but in any case, it would seem that Brooklyn significantly predates the London underground train system.

actually, this is FUD, and isn't at all correct. the board are political and money people, and of the independent / moderate / better world persuasion.

Peter Ackerman, the chairman and a founder, works on wall street, and also was previously associated with Freedom House, which was started by Eleanor Roosevelt, and which does research and advocacy for human rights and political freedom. He also has co-founded the American Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which "promotes the study and utilization of nonmilitary strategies by civilian-based movements to establish and defend human rights, social justice and democracy".

I'm not sure where you get far right and untrustworthy out of that, but if you mean that Americans Elect are trying to provide a voice that isn't of and filtered by the existing two dysfunctional self interested politics parties, i'm all for that kind of untrustworthy.

mod score 5. really?

you are willing to sound off in a hugely popular internet forum currently discussing politics... about how the internet is irrelevant to politics?
(and then you go on to basically say that all modern politics are programmed, and way right wing, and suck, anyway.)

i guess you won't be happy till it is all overthrown, so why even bother with the curmudgeonly (and not very useful) postings...

moderators, what exactly were you thinking w the mod points on this guy?