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I worked for Warren Energy Engineering for a year. I was an energy efficiency consultant. I inspected the rebate programs in NYC for Con Ed. I got to see the mechanical rooms of all the big sky scrappers. In my reports I listed lots of ways to save some huge amounts of energy. The biggest project I was involved with was Combustion Analysis inspection of 100 boilers for Columbia University. They followed a efficiency calculation found on the Combustion Analyzers. That calculation did not account for the velocity of the air moving through the combustion Chamber. If you underfired the boilers it would dilute the combustion air with excess air and lower the stack temp. This caused the Analyzers to calculate a artificially high efficiency number. In reality this caused the boiler to be underfired. The fuel consumption was higher and efficiency lower in reality. The field technicians were under firing the boilers and increasing CO2 levels on 80% of the 100 boilers in the buildings I inspected. I provided lots of evidence from many different sources over a couple months to try and persuade everyone to change the program but nobody cared and nobody did anything.

I was the geek everyone chose to ignore. So I quit my job and went to work for Arctic Heat Pumps where I am able to make a difference.

Based on my experiences, giving utility companies money for renewable and energy efficiency programs is a waste of time. The incentive is for them to increase fuel consumption per building. It increases there profits. They don't seem to care about actually reducing our carbon footprint.

if you use an old gas heater for a buffer, I would disable the aquastat, maybe pull it out and free up a port. Block off the flue on top and bottom. You will still get some heat off it as jacket loss.

It’s sounding like the air volume that HPWH manuals are suggesting, 700 sq ft, may not be adequate. This according to Larry and his friend Gary that is deeply involved in the HPWH analysis in actual run time