Gerry Wolter 0:00

The other advantage is in a typical gas fired furnace, you're using a minimum of a four inch duct. And again, when you're looking at some of those ducts had to run through cabinetry, under beds, crawl spaces are taking up space with the TwinTemp Junior circulating antifreeze and half inch drives.

Ethan Waldman 0:22

Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast The show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 280 with Gerry Wolter. Gerry Wolter is an inventor and entrepreneur who has revolutionized tankless hot water systems for small and tiny houses. His company PrecisionTemp offers innovative and American made water heating solutions for both heat and hot water from onboard hot water for sailors to portable heaters for firefighters and Tiny House tankless heaters Gerry has done at all. Today, he's here to share his expertise on compact cutting edge hot water heating solutions for the tiny house movement. We'll talk through the different models that PrecisionTemp offers and discuss why you might choose one over the other. Plus we discuss hydronic heat, and why it's an option more people should consider if you're planning to build a tiny home, you won't want to miss this episode. So let's dive in and learn from Gerry Wolter. I asked John and Fin Kernohan of United Tiny House Association what they love about their PrecisionTemp hot water heaters. And here's what they told me.

John Kernohan 1:27

Hey, Ethan. This is John and Fin Kernohan with the United Tiny House Association. We have a total of three PrecisionTemp On Demand hot water heaters. The thing we really like about these and folks know this, I think they picked this up on Fin and I, if we don't like something, you'll never hear us talk about it. So the two things that we noticed experienced immediately. They took painstaking effort to make sure that it was done right installed. And so that was pretty cool right there. The other thing is the continuous on demand hot water that just ran forever. Without any fluctuations or anything. I can't imagine an application, especially in our environment and our lifestyle of being the Nomad, transportable, mobile, tiny lifestyle where one of these units aren't good to use.

Ethan Waldman 2:25

Right now. PrecisionTemp is offering $100 off any unit plus free shipping when use the coupon code THLP, so head over to precisiontemp.com and use the coupon code THLP at checkout for $100 off any unit. Thank you so much to PrecisionTemp for sponsoring our show

All right. I am here with Gerry Wolter. Gerry is a visionary whose unexpected journey led him from photojournalism at the Cincinnati Enquirer to pioneering tankless hot water systems from rehabbing his own house to mastering plumbing and wiring. Gerry's curiosity was piqued by an old tankless heater, driving him to modernize the concept. A sailor at heart, He revolutionized onboard hot water later expanding PrecisionTemp innovations to include portable heaters for firefighters, gas, dishwasher boosters, and Game Changing RV tankless heaters with an eye on efficiency. Gerry's latest frontier is the tiny house movement, offering compact cutting edge heating solutions. PrecisionTemp not only stands out for innovation, but also for its unmatched American made quality and customer service. Gerry Wolter, welcome to the show.

Gerry Wolter 3:50

Hello, Ethan. Thank you for having me communicate with your all your friends on on tiny homes. And that introduction, yeah, give me a big head. Thank you.

Ethan Waldman 4:02

Well, good. You know, it's you know, we've been working with PrecisionTemp here at at Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast for for years now. I have a PrecisionTemp unit in my tiny house. And I feel like PrecisionTemp It really is like the go to hot water heater. If you want to have a tiny house that's like really comfortable. And you know, unlimited hot water. Who can argue with that?

Gerry Wolter 4:26

I hope, hope I can answer all the questions you have today to communicate to the community so they can share the experiences we have. Because I've been heating in my house with PrecisionTemp house and hot water for the last 20 years. And wow, see some of the some of the community people do that.

Ethan Waldman 4:48

Yeah, well, you know, maybe we should start with just an explanation of you know, why a tankless hot water heater is more efficient than, you know, a tank based hot water heater? And maybe you could talk a little bit about kind of the genesis of things, you know, because I'm assuming that RVs in, you know, in the old days probably had tank based hot water heaters, and some of them probably still do.

Speaker 1 5:17

Yes, I think the majority of RV's today still have tank based hot water. Okay. And basically, it's because it's the way it's always been done. Tankless water heaters go all the way back to pre World War Two. They were actually invented by Bosch back in the 1930s. And they were used in the United States until about World War Two. And, okay, they were very large, cumbersome, inefficient, but they still did a better job in tech eaters, they didn't use as much energy, you weren't paying to store heat, and reheat it. And it was only providing hot water on demand when you open the tap. When World War Two came, copper became scarce because the war effort was a big component of the tankless water heaters. So that's when America whenever to tank heaters, they were cheaper, not as efficient, but energy was cheap, then space was not a consideration. So until the last several years, tankless heaters did not catch on into American homes. And as you describe, when I built my original house, I heard about tankless water heaters and I got my hands on an old rod from the 1930s. From somebody I've worked with in the newspaper business, put it in, and that gave me the concept of a big, sunken tub to fill. And it was driven home by the when my wife and I would go sailing and find out, the only way we could take showers is run the engine on a sailboat or plug into shore power to get six gallons of hot water. So that's how we came about about designing the original heater. At that time, the technology on the European heaters that were coming out of Europe was all mechanical temperature control was bad. And we designed the first electronic control, pilotless water heater in the world actually. So it evolved from our original marine unit or sailboats, because that was our first love. And to a couple a couple commercial units. And because of the Compact nature of it, and the portability of it, we made a small compact unit that can be used by fire departments or going up fire hydrants and the military for decontamination showers in the field. Then we got into the RV industry because we found just like tiny homes, and sometimes more so space, and weight and efficiency are considerations. So the unit that we designed originally for the RV manufacturer and eventually evolved to be suited for the tiny home industry was less than half the size of a six gallon tank and provided continuous hot water. Right, no matter how long you ran it. So yeah, and used about half the amount of gas that we run on propane or natural gas.

Ethan Waldman 8:33

I want to follow up briefly on on just the idea of a pilotless heater, just so that people understand kind of what that means. So could you explain, you know what, you know what a heater with a pilot versus what a heater with a without a pilot, you know, what does that mean in terms of your gas consumption and just the use of it?

Gerry Wolter 8:53

A couple different things. gas consumption of a pilot by pilot isn't that extreme. When it is a portable application when you got propane bottles and so on, it is consideration. But the bigger considerations are pilots, pilot lights go out, they'll blow out especially in a mobile application or anyplace where the flu is supposed to win. The other major consideration is safety. You don't have a standing flame that's unattended and if that pilot goes out, it's about 30 seconds at the main gas burner come on was ignition and cause a very dangerous situation of raw gas. Yeah, it will, with a high voltage spark ignite the burner within a fraction of a second coming on. And it also proofs the flame which means that if the burner doesn't come on within five to six seconds, it shuts the gas off. Very much a safety factor to have electronic ignition and flame proofing over a pilot light. Got it? Got it?

Ethan Waldman 10:08

Yeah. And I actually, I can't remember the stat but, you know, it doesn't seem like a lot of gas. But over the days, weeks, months, years, you know, your pilot light actually does burn, it adds up.

Gerry Wolter 10:21

Exactly, yeah. And it's, it's not only the inconvenience of filling the tanks. But it's an environmental thing. We all know that. There's an energy crisis, climate change crisis, and so on. Every little bit contributes to that. Yeah, that helps out. And then that combined with our temperature control, it only allows the burner to come up to a level needed to maintain the set temperature, so it's not always on full flame. So you're saving you're saving more gas. That way, plus having a more comfortable shower or whatever. So you've got a very consistent outlet temperature.

Ethan Waldman 10:59

Very nice. Yeah. And I concur about that consistent temperature that you get from from the the unit.

Speaker 1 11:06

Yeah. Now on, I did mention something to you about. The unit is very, very specific to the tiny home industry, and it's our RV 550 NSP. And the NSP stands for no sidewalk penetration. Typical RV water heater, whether it be a tank, like the old, old fashioned ones, or art campus, yes, you have to cut a hole through the side of the RV, and the door that brings into combustion air and allows the flue gases to go out on the outside of the RV or tiny home. The NSP eliminates the need to cut that hole in there because you got a nice clean sidewall. On your tiny home, you don't want all kinds of doors and access panels to break up the appearance of the NSP can be mounted, like one foot cube, mounted in a cabinet and the kitchen cabinet or whatever, fluid out through an exhaust pipe to the floor just like a two inch exhaust. There's no visual impact. It's, inside and takes up very little room one cubic foot, which is important. And when you've got limited space. The other features would, that our unit has that no other unit has is we are able to be used in any climate, any part of the country, it's not like limited to southern us. We've got freeze protection, electronic freeze protection, again, that will allow the user to use our water heater without draining it down to 20 below zero, which, in some areas of the northern part of the country is a big deal. And in fact, we sell a number units up around the Arctic Circle, are throwing out diesel equipment and so on.

Gerry Wolter 13:05

So. And the nice thing is a lot of the tiny homes are

permanently placed. So we offer the option of either propane, or natural gas when they do have natural gas available right.

Ethan Waldman 13:24

Now, one question that I often get from students and listeners about hot water heaters in general is, you know, maybe somebody is building their tiny house and they're not planning to use any propane or natural gas. And they still seem to want an on demand hot water heater for all the obvious benefits that they offer. But I often advise I have people steer clear of electric on demand hot water heaters. And I was curious if you could explain kind of why electric why why is gas. Why does gas works so well for heating hot water versus electric?

Gerry Wolter 14:06

Well basically put in perspective. Our heater is 55,000 BTUs, which is just about perfectly size, or an application of a tiny home or RV. Okay, it's not oversized size, so that even in the coldest water above freezing, you can still get a comfortable shower. Yep, to get the same amount of heat with electric it would take about over 100 amps of power. Wow. And that's a lot of power. It doesn't leave much for anything else. So basically the under the counter electric tankless heaters are nice for washing your hands. So it's maybe a quart a minute at reasonable temperatures beyond the electric just is not efficient and requires too much power. Yeah, have your wires and so on. Yeah And if it'll be a much larger unit? Yeah. Theoretically, electric is very efficient because it's dead short, all that heat goes into the hot water. Yeah. And being practical, it doesn't work nearly as well as gas.

Ethan Waldman 15:15

Yeah, yeah, I always, I always tell people when they're looking at any tankless water heater to look at, you know, the maximum temperature, the maximum rise they can get in degrees. And, you know, when you look at the electric units, you see, maybe, you know, only like 20 degrees or 30 degrees. And so, you know, if you're getting cold city water at 50 degrees through your pipe, you might only be able to get the water up to, you know, 80 degrees, which is not not going to be a comfortable shower for you know,

Gerry Wolter 15:49

the actual ideal shower temperature for a human being is about 105 degrees. Okay, our unit we sight Yeah, you want to make sure that, you know, some people put the large domestic wall Manor units and which do a great job for a large home. But, and a tiny home application or an RV application, there are over size oversized. So they won't be able to modulate down low enough for the lower flows. And they'll cycle on and off. Yep, ours is perfectly sized, roughly an 88 to 90 degree temperature rise, or gallon per minute. Nice, which is just about the right range for the application we're looking at. So in a lot of cases, bigger is better. But with hot water, you don't want to over capacity it because you will have cycling on and off and have hot, cold spurts. And really under sizing it you're gonna get cold showers. So right, right, that's why that is the sweet spot.

Ethan Waldman 17:00

Now I know that, you know, there's the RV 550 and the 550 NSP. And the difference there is that the RV 550 can kind of replace an existing through wall hot water heater. And the NSP kind of mounts over a small hole in the floor and the exhaust pipe kind of flows out from there. You have a couple of different models. What So can you just talk a little bit about you know, the shower mate and kind of who and what that is for?

Gerry Wolter 17:30

Sure, actually your description of the difference between the 550 and the 550 NSP is perfect. 550, replaces that typical tank water heater on an RV. The ShowerMate or the M-550. With an M for marine. Yeah, since we started. In the sailboat industry, that's kind of a plus or a heart, it's a smaller market. But the M-550 is designed for boats, it's very, very much like the NSP except it flows out of the Because you can't can't flow through the bottom of a boat. And now you can't Yeah, and the internal fixtures on it are all stainless steel. Okay, too, and everything's brass or copper over stainless. Because then there's saltwater environment, there's going to be corrosion, but functionally, performance wise specification wise. All three units are identical. You'll get the same amount of water the same temperature control. Okay, just a little bit different configurations.

Ethan Waldman 18:40

Now at some point, and correct me if I'm wrong. There were some added love letters, which is Ec, I don't think that my 550 NSP is an EC. So what does that stand for?

Gerry Wolter 18:51

Electronic Control. Okay, yeah, the original NSP did not have electronic control.

Ethan Waldman 19:01

Okay, I think my I think I have one of the originals. It's got the spring.

Gerry Wolter 19:05

Oh, yeah. That's that a while? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All the new ones are electronic control. Okay, we took our basic early unit from many years ago. Five 500 and reincorporated a lot of the features into the 550 and the and approved it. Got it. So all those letters that differentiate. Yeah, yeah.

Ethan Waldman 19:36

And now there's another model where there's another two models there's the twin temp two and the TwinTemp Junior. Can you talk about you know what, what those are? Why, why you develop them and kind of what they do.

Gerry Wolter 19:50

Yes, the twin temples the twin temps are a combination, endless hot water, like the 550s by but they also provide space heating. So the replace the water heater and the furnace and they do it hydraulically, meaning you're running hot antifreeze around your home. And you can use either small blowers that go into plates or bed bases or selling these little computer fans extremely quiet or going to have or eating just using x pipe under the floor. We've had customers do it both ways. And hydronic heating is probably the most efficient, the most comfortable, especially when you're using in radian mode, because you don't have the air stratifying auto air at the top, you know, and you don't have blowers stirring up the air. The other advantages in a typical gas fired furnace, you're using a minimum of four inch duct. And again, when you're looking at some of those ducts have to run through cabinetry, under beds, crawl spaces are taking up space. Yeah, with the TwinTemp Junior circulating antifreeze in half inch pipes. So the conduit, getting it from one place to another is much smaller takes up less space, and just a fraction of the heat loss along the way. And you don't have the sound of loud, whisper quiet when it comes on the middle of the night. And you only have the one unit taking up the space installation in both the TwinTemp Junior and the TwinTemp Junior will explain the difference that they mount in flue just like the NSP no sidewalk penetration blew up through a two inch exhaust pipe. Yep. Now the Junior, which I would say, would be most referred by the tiny home people is a single zone system. Okay, it means it's got one loop runs off on one wall thermostat. And it's also got a backup 110 volt heating element so that it prioritizes the computer prioritizes. If you're just going to do a few dishes or wash your hands or whatever, it's just going to use your electric heating. But you don't have to have one. But a lot of minimum charge or no charge for electric. And if you have the capacity of the unit, it kicks the gas on. So you got both. Now on the twin, that's the TwinTemp Junior on the twin temp two. It's exactly the same gas burner. Same. It's got a little three gallon socket. But it's got two independent sounds. So they can have a zone here, which in a tiny home really isn't necessary. It's it's not going to be big enough that you'd want to have this room but that temp, one temperature, another room another temperature. So the junior would probably work just as well for tying up TwinTemp. Junior also has two electric EGA elements instead of one. Okay, so there's two differences. And the I think are the difference in money. People would refer the temperature, we'd like to make money and sell expensive equipment, but we want it to be practical for people. So in the end, right. I'm industry juniors is probably the one

Ethan Waldman 23:39

yeah, that that seems like it's probably the right size for a tiny home. Can you just you already mentioned it but just in case somebody's listening and heard you you know, use the term hydronic heating. Can you explain what that is?

Gerry Wolter 23:52

Yeah. hydronic is basically using a liquid. Okay. And it would it's a non toxic antifreeze problem. And it is a small three gallon tank that's heated by the burner. And it's when circulated throughout the tiny house to pack. Okay, just a typical X pipe. And it's radiant heating, as opposed convection heating with air. Yep, much more efficient and wider and more even heat. So it does have a lot of advantages but hydronic just basically liquid. Okay, and water, liquid old, so much more. So many more BTUs than air, you can move a lot, lot more heat through a small conduit by a half inch pipe then you can through a four inch air duct. So those are the advantages. Once you're replacing two piece of equipment with one

Ethan Waldman 24:53

got it you're, you're replacing a furnace and hot water or heater with with one unit? And so the the twin temp actually has, you know, because I mean, obviously, the antifreeze is kept separate from the water. So it all but it all flows through the same heating element or...

Gerry Wolter 25:15

they're all flows through the same temperature control burner and heat. Okay, what happens it takes antifreeze out of the little tank. What's it? Yeah, exchanger above the burner circulates back into the tank. Now for your potable water that you use every day is your showers, the kitchen and so on. There's a separate heat exchanger within this tank submerged in the tank, which is heated to antifreeze. Okay, and then you've got a control to control the outlet temperature on that. So the water is totally separated from antifreeze so that you don't have any freeze. Integrating water.

Ethan Waldman 25:58

Yeah, yeah, that wouldn't that would not be good.

Gerry Wolter 26:00

No, it would. It's it's a non toxic antifreeze. But it wouldn't taste very good. No, no.

Ethan Waldman 26:08

So one, you know, one challenge for tiny homes kind of across the board is winter and cold temperatures. And I'm curious, you know, I've definitely not going to like name any brands or things, but I've definitely seen plenty of folks, especially, you know, more in the south and not cold places, who by the very inexpensive propane, instant hot water heater that's mounted outside of their tiny house. And you know, they get an unexpected cold snap. And you know, the thing freezes up, and it's just kind of kaput. Can you talk about how the PrecisionTemp units handle cold temperatures and kind of how they're able to continue operating in cold temperatures?

Gerry Wolter 26:52

Yeah, we handle it in two ways. One thing you're talking about, raise it up. Worst thing can any water heaters have freezes, because if the attack is shorter bursts, ice is on yielding. Yeah. Like I said earlier, we've tested ours, down to 20, below zero Fahrenheit. And we've had customers say that went lower than that, but we can't verify that. But how we we do it two different ways. One, we have a scenario built in into the software, that of C is 38 degrees in the heat of operator center, it will turn the gas burner on very low burn that protects the main heat exchanger, the peripheral plumbing, cold water line coming in, and of the heater itself, and the hot water line going out. And in the case of the flow meter, which detects flow, we've got separate little 12 volt heating elements on him that trigger at 38 degrees. So that makes the peripheral. And even at that the total 12 volt power consumption is under three amps when the when the weather freeze protection comes on. So sips electric and propane. So we have the optional 110 to 12 volt power supply to our our units and that's wanting to take care of normal use and cold weather operation.

Ethan Waldman 28:32

Yep. Now, one question that I always like to ask when you know, kind of looking at different appliances for a tiny house is like is what maintenance is required? You know, ongoing, because, you know, I think people envision living in their tiny houses for you know, for many years and they want appliances that are gonna last for many years.

Gerry Wolter 28:54

Well, very little maintenance. The big thing is maybe once a year. Look into it. My divers love to get into small spaces. And, and there's precious which in which is a safety device, which senses whether they are events running or not, the fire event isn't running or the air is blocked, it won't allow the bergamot one little in that sensor will keep it from functioning, okay? And keep the bugs out and so on. Make sure not to waterlines Okay. Check the hookups for leaks. But basically it's pretty, pretty maintenance free. Now you want to make sure that if you're away from your tiny home or laying it up for the winter, yeah, you either keep the 12 R and propane on or you do have to drain your plumbing system and the water heater. And to do that it's very easy to drain our water heaters Take the front cover off, open the pressure relief valve. Open your highest tap water tap, water tap, and it will drain out and evacuate the heat exchanger. The other way. If you're winterizing your whole plumbing system, which you would have to do if if it's not going to be used all the mature people that with air, yeah. And or use the pink RV antifreeze tank is coming out of your taps, you know, your water heaters fully winterized. Yeah. As far as we're starting it up in the spring, the big deal is make sure get the cobwebs out and any signs of mud dobbers. Okay. And remember, which brings us to another thing when people are starting up not only our units, but other other equipment in the spring. There's been questions. Yeah, if a customer has any questions all we encouraged them to call us. Yeah, being an American made. We're right here in Cincinnati. And we have on site service phone service on an 800. Line. And we rather have somebody ask a question, even if they feel like it's a stupid question and not have a problem later. Because generally, problems are due to lack of talking about or something like that maybe low voltage, low band pressure regulator on the game to act or something. Or waterflow problems. Which brings up another thing with a lot of tiny homes, or do it yourselfers like you and I have been in past years, and putting in their own plumbing system, it might be less than ideal as far as flow rates and consistency and so on go. Maintaining flow is important, and the type of showerhead that will have type of faucets, some faucets and showerheads have severe restrictorsin them , which will not allow the water to run at an adequate rate. So if it's running, and under four tenths of a gallon a minute, the water heater won't come on. Simple things like that. Okay. Now the thing is, people might call and say I'm getting perfect hot water from my lavatory faucet, perfect hot water from my kitchen faucet. But in my shower, it's not working, we found that a lot of people will shut their shirt off with a button on the showerhead their mouths open. And that would be what be called a water bypass because the water comes from the cold water side of the valve goes into the hot water system and bypasses the water heater. So when they turn on another tap, it won't turn on. So it's just simple things like that. Turn off your shower, using the valve and not the butt on the showerhead. Right. So service is everything and answering questions asking questions. And that's a lot of simple stuff like that. A lot of the other manufacturers have the cheaper foreign units, they don't hear that? Yes.

Ethan Waldman 33:14

Yeah, yeah. And I've, you know, I've experienced being able to call in and ask questions firsthand. And it's just, it's great to be able to do that. A lot of tiny houses, whether whether we like it or not, or whether we wanted to or not kind of become more hands on with the maintenance of our houses and solving kind of technical issues. A lot of you know, contractors, and you know, service professionals sometimes don't want to come and work on tiny houses. So we're kind of often forced into becoming DIYers. And so it's really nice when when there is a company that you can call and talk to somebody and kind of get help with things. So so we appreciate that.

Gerry Wolter 33:52

Yeah, well, we know it to do that. And as I've said more than once you're gonna have what you think is the best product in the world. If you don't have service backed up, you don't have a product. We're not once this throw parts of people safe. Try this by that we try to if there is an issue, we try to analyze it and get to the root of it. Yeah, Ray, our service manager is excellent. I get more compliments on him. And other people have handled service. Great. We like that.

Ethan Waldman 34:23

Well, I was just curious. You know, you've been so generous with your time and just answering all my questions. Are there any just like really fun or interesting applications that you've seen, you know, an NSPs or twin temps or shower mates, you know, put into

Gerry Wolter 34:40

There was some application we'd never think of. One was we found out that a salvage competent salvage is up boats and ships in the colder oceans. They would have a problem with their divers staying down maybe. And their wetsuit. Maybe a maximum of 20 minutes before they get hydrated. They wind up getting RV 550s mounting a Monder boats and run circulating water down into the wetsuit, they can stay down indefinitely or until their air ran out. Save them a lot of time saving a lot of money, and a lot of discomfort, things like that. The other thing is, we're mentioning the portable water sailing buddy of mine was a captain in the society Fire Department. And he knew I was into the hot water he knew about the marine water heater. And he said, you know, freezing fire plugs in the winter, big cities are a real problem. And if you just have to spend 20 minutes trying to thaw out a fire plug, the house burns down. If you can come up with something, we'd like to see it while we designed. It was a 39 pound suitcase that had a water heater in small propane source, a rechargeable battery and a pump. And we were able to circulate 180 degree water into the fire hydrant and thought out in three minutes. Nice. And then another application with a portable showerhead for decontamination showers and the military wind up buying those or decontamination and feel sharp. So it's it's an application I would have never thought of as light because I had a friend who was a fire captain and told me about this issue. So there are some things you can't even imagine without experiencing yourself you have to other people's advice and suggestions, nice. But other food service vehicles and so on.

Ethan Waldman 36:49

Yes, I'm sure for food truck or other food service vehicle. You know, having hot water is just paramount and having a reliable kind of unlimited hot water was one.

Gerry Wolter 37:01

I guess I should mention very important fact that we are fully certified to the proper MC and CSA standards for these outlets. And there's a lot of the off brand units that do not have that certification. Okay, and they wouldn't be able to sell to manufacturers, they could just sell in the aftermarket. Still, certification means it's been checked for all the safety features on it, make sure you're functional and so on. Right, fully certified.

Ethan Waldman 37:33

Yeah. And for you know, for on demand propane hot water heater, that's essentially you know, 5500 BTUs is a lot is a lot of flame. That's a lot. That's a lot of fire. You know, you don't want you don't want that inside of your house.

It you know, if unless, you know, it's been described correctly.

Gerry Wolter 37:53

A lot a lot of flame. Yeah. It's not as much as some to put it in perspective. My wife and I have been heating our house for 20 years on 55,000 btus. And before that we had 100,000 130,000 b2u furnace. So I'm using the same burner and heat exchanger assembly as we use in the 550. But we're able to tune in to heat our house when we started developing the RV, tiny home theaters, one of the beta tests. So I used one not only to heat our water at home, we had a 2400 square foot house. But I used to replace the furnace pumping it through a water to air heat exchanger. So just ran a blower through it replaced 130,000 btu furnace and add a water heater with that. And my wife kept saying what are we going to get put the bigger unit because we made it larger 200,000 BTUs commercial unit for restaurants. So what this one hasn't broken yet. And it still hasn't broken. And it will run when it's zero degrees out in Cincinnati, which just happens. It's rare. It'll run 24 hours a day, but it keeps the house warm. And that shows how much 55,000 BTUs. can do if it's properly managed. Fantastic. But you're right 55,000 BTUs in a space that you don't have proper ventilation so on are ever designed properly, again, desirable, and that's why certification is is key. Nice. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman 39:40

Well, Gerry, this has been it's been great to get to finally meet you and to talk all things. PrecisionTemp. Is there is there anything that you know that I haven't asked you about that you were that you're hoping to tell our audience about?

Gerry Wolter 39:52

You've been quite thorough he's appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate it. Let me thank you. Visit your community And, and if anybody has any questions, they can call me directly. Excellent. Our website is precisiontemp.com got our 800 number on there they can call service sales for me, and any, any questions or concerns, be glad to take care of them. Because that's the other thing. Building a tiny home, we encourage people to go online, get our installation manual. Yep, look at it before they lay up as something I should have mentioned early on, before they start laying out their floorplan. So they have a proper place for the water heater. And although it's designed for 00, clearance, or heat, we do want the main access door on it accessible that you don't have to take out other appliances or takeout, you know, cabinet walls or anything, make sure it's totally accessible. And it's a place where you can if you're using the NSP, go through the floor for your questionnaire and your flue so that you don't have to rapidly rip it out later. And try to mount it just like any other water heater manage as close to your end use points like your kitchen sink or bathroom to minimize the amount of water you use to get water from the water heater to the outlet. And that would be like in any house using any water heater. But just pre planning. And I say Yeah, and I was looking at your website how you were talking about design and plan. Take a lot of time and sometimes more than actually doing the job. And and it's very important to avoid extra work or, or hassle later by planning ahead as to where you're going to install it. Follow the instructions. And if any questions call us.

Ethan Waldman 42:00

Absolutely. Awesome. Well, Gerry Wolter, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.

Gerry Wolter 42:03

Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.

Ethan Waldman 42:08

Thank you so much to Gerry Wolter for being a guest on the show today. And thank you so much to PrecisionTemp for sponsoring this episode. If you head over to precisiontemp.com and use the coupon code THLP. At checkout, you'll get $100 off any unit plus free shipping. You can find that link plus the show notes which include a complete transcript of this episode photos and more at thetinyhouse.net/280 Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/280 Well, that's all for this week. I'm your host Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai