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| Attic cold tank. © Eugene Brennan |
The insulation on the cold water tank in my attic is an ad hoc setup from 20 years ago or more. I just used leftover fibreglass insulation from doing the floor and shrink-wrapped it around the tank. I'm thinking of replacing it with a removable jacket that I can take off in the summer so the water insides absorbs ambient heat. Might lower the cost for heating water somewhat. At this time of the year, water from the mains is colder than the air temperature. However a heat exchanger would improve things. That would take heat from the attic and put it into the water. A heat exchanger uses fins for increasing surface area to maximise the rate of heat transfer. That's why radiators in vehicles and in your home are finned or have accordion-like metal corrugations. Similarly for the heatsinks on some electronic components such as power transistors and microprocessors. The ambient temperature in an attic that doesn't have the slope of the roof insulated can reach the mid-thirties on a sunny day in the summer. Unfortunately water, compared to other a liquids has a huge specific heat capacity. That means it takes a lot of heat to raise the temperature of a kilo of water by 1 deg Celsius. (4200 J⋅kg−1⋅K−1, expressed as "joules per kilogram per Kelvin. The joule is the SI unit of energy).
I remember in the 70s, water was always warm when it came out of the cold tap. I guess that was before the cavernous reservoir (which lorries were able to drive around in, I'm told) was constructed in the hill at Old Kilcullen. Before that, I think our water came from a reservoir on the elevated ground behind Dunlea's garage. The likely smaller volume of water in the tank and lower population in the town resulting in less water flowing from the tank probably gave it time to warm up.