Technology on tap: Water heating has struggled to gain proper recognition as a separate building service, but the drive for better performance and energy efficiency has changed all that, according to Paul Yunnie

摘要

Hot water is probably the building service that is most taken for 1 granted. Most readers will, at some time or another, have visited a site and asked where the hot water comes from only to receive the glib reply "out of the tap". Hot water is a constant necessity in our lives - while heating and lighting can be very seasonal, hot water is required all year round. It is therefore somewhat amazing that very little is written on the subject and, in most text books, it tends to be assumed that the hot water is a by-product of the space heating boiler. This was certainly true up to around 25 years ago when the new generation of gas-fired hot water heaters appeared on the UK market, generally sourced from the US where they had been in common use for the best part of 100 years.