Per

Well, my curiousity has been satisfied, thank you all for your informative replies.

Loren Pechtel

I've had it happen in a nice modern house--I forgot that we had turned the water heater to vacation in expectation of leaving--then we decided to take a shower before going. The tank ran out with my hair full of shampoo!

Loren Pechtel

Yeah, you turn it up a *LITTLE* and see what happens.

Infidelettante

Hi Per, I work in a hotel and can assure you only the cheapest, rat infested, fleabag hotel would let you run out of hot water.

I once had a guest from Sweden who complained there was no cold water in his suite. I had to explain to him that he did in fact have cold water in his suite but that was as cold as it gets in South Alabama in July.

JT

Ovazor

Anybody who warms their houses with oil or electricity heat their water and have a hot water tank. According to this article about 50% of danish space and water heating is done with district heating

Godless Dave

Does anyone in Scandinavia heat with natural gas? Most homes in the US use natural gas, but then we have a large domestic supply.

Evangelion

I feel sorry for the Americans, with their limited hot water. Reminds me of photos from places like Zambia. I imagine entire American families lining up on the street with buckets, desperately hoping to scrounge a few litres of hot water from the local... um... hot water place. Poor mongrels. :boohoo:

My hot water is literally endless. I can have as much as I want.

Evangelion

Community Heating - the European Success Story.

• Finland can claim to be the world pioneer in CHP. Many wood processing companies realised early that they could earn extra income by selling waste heat from their onsite electricity generation to community heating networks serving the surrounding areas.
  
  Community heating takes 45% of the market share of heat demand in buildings and 63% of all community heat is provided from CHP plants. In Finland's cities over 80% of the heat demand in buildings is met from community heating (90% in Helsinki, the capital).
  
  Finland's first community heating scheme opened in 1952. The number of schemes expanded particularly rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, largely to reduce dependence upon imported oil, City Councils developed the networks, funded by borrowing, the costs of which have been largely recouped through connection, standing and fuel charges.
  
  [...]
  
  Average community heating charges in Helsinki are around 15 per annum standing charge and 16 per month for heat, making a typical annual bill, for heating and hot water, 209.
  
  This is remarkably cheap given the generally high cost of living in Finland (Helsinki is acknowledged to be the most expensive of all European capital cities), exceptionally cold winters by British standards (average daytime temperatures in Helsinki from December to March inclusive are -6 to -30 C), and high average household temperatures - 22 C compared to 18 C in Britain.
  
  The extensive city community heating networks have been achieved, as in other Nordic countries, through a considerable degree of central and local planning by government, but working in close collaboration with the private sector.
  
  Electric heating is the main competitor with community heating (as Finland has no indigenous natural gas). Electric heating is cheaper to install than community heating (although community heating companies often reduce their connection charges to compete with electricity) and cheap night time tariffs have made the running costs highly competitive with community heating.
  
  To counteract this, planning law has for some years forbidden the installation of electric heating in new homes in areas zoned for community heating. Municipal building codes also enable local authorities to reinforce this at local level.

Ovazor

Yes, of course, and many of those combined production powerplants run on natural gas. Norway has a domestic supply, and there's a pipeline from Russia to Finland.