It would be practically impossible to live in the modern world without hot water. People use this resource to clean themselves, the things around them, and as a tool for a huge range of other jobs. Of course, with this resource being so critical to life, just about every home in first-world society has access to it at home, with all of the tools required to create the stuff being readily available. To give you an idea of how this has developed over time, this post will be exploring the evolution of hot water, and how humans have managed to master this crucial element of life.
Simple Fires
Humans took a very long time to figure out how to create boilers like the ones people use today, and the way that hot water was originally produced didn’t involve a boiler whatsoever. Instead, people would simply use an open fire to be able to heat up their water. This would take a long time, using loads of resources along the way, making it far too hard to create enough for a modern home or business.
Coal Boilers
With normal fires not being able to produce anywhere near enough hot water for a growing world, coal boilers started to be developed towards the beginning of the industrial era. These machines operated in a similar way to a steam train, only the water wasn’t allowed to escape as vapor. Instead, it would be trapped inside a large tank, being dispensed throughout the day as people needed it.
Gas Boilers
Keeping solid fuels available to make fires takes up a lot of space and the way that these materials burn leaves loads of waste in the form of ash and smoke. To overcome this, gas has long been the standard for boilers in most homes, as this sort of fuel doesn’t leave any mark when it has been burned. Many modern homes use tankless water heater systems to make sure that their water can be heated, saving energy and providing on-demand water heating.
Solar Boilers
Finally, as the latest step in this puzzle, it’s time to think about solar boilers. Instead of using a burning fuel to heat up the water in your home, the sun can be an incredible resource and can handle this process without any trouble. This is achieved by connecting a network of pipes to the outside of your home, using the surface of each pipe to soak up the heat from the sun, in turn warming up the water inside.
As time goes on, more and more ways to achieve the goal of keeping your water hot will come about. As with most tech, though, you can easily end up spending money just before something new hits the market, making it worth staying up to date when it comes to advancements in this field. Of course, everyone has their own way of achieving this sort of goal, leaving this element of the task to handle for yourself.
