Hot liquor from the hot tap?

[sagwalla]

Andy's question on using boiler bits for a heat exchanger has me wondering...

Do any of you fill your hot liquor tanks from the hot tap?

I start with water from the outdoor cold tap. You usually fill your (tea) kettle with cold water, no? The idea, as I understand it, is that hot water can leach lead or other metals out of the piping and welds; it would be better not to drink it.

But, since there's not much piping between the boiler and the kitchen hot tap, is there really that much risk? Maybe it's the solder in the boiler that is of most concern.

If I used the hot tap, I would still put the hot water in the HLT and bring it up to the boil to drive off any chlorine and precipitate out the carbonate, but I can imagine there are savings in time and energy cost in using the kitchen boiler to preheat the HLT water rather than the electric element. May be especially relevant given the piggyback question I asked earlier.

I guess this indirectly raises a concern about using a boiler coil. Good enough for the shower, but not for drinking?

[Andy]

In a lot of UK homes the HW supply comes from an insulated storage tank which in turn
is fed from a large CW tank. So the HW may have been standing around for some time and has been through a number of different storage containers and associated piping.

Other houses have "on demand" HW which is heated using a heat exchanger of the type I was considering for the wort cooling so the HW is "fresher" than the storage tank approach.


Innit.