My family and I are making aliyah in a few months. One of the apartments we’re looking out has some modification put in to allow for hot water on Shabbos from the tap. Does anyone know what kind of system that is and how halachically it’s accepted?
You think sunlight is free, but it’s not. Just wait a few billion years and when the sun runs out of hydrogen, you’ll see that the bill will come due. 🙂
Even solar water heaters are problematic according to many opinions because the new cold water that enters becomes heated by the water that is already hot and is called toldas hachama which is assur mi’derabbanan. There is an invention to cut of the cold water intake to avoid this problem, and maybe that’s what your apartment has.
PM, if you have any more information on this invention I’d like to hear about it. Because then I could use hot water from any hot water tank ( that was cooked before Shabbos) which would be wonderful. But if you shut off the intake, then you have no pressure to move the hot water out. Unless they pump air into the tank?
Wolf Actually its worse than that in about 500 million years the sun will get hot enough that it will boil the seas and render the earth a dry and lifeless rock.
Ooh, I hope I’m still alive in 500 million years. And I hope I have a beachfront house. I can just imagine waking up in the morning, walking out across the (hot) sand, dipping my 12 oz. foam cup into the sea and just adding instant coffee. Ahhhhh.
Just FYI, the Israeli solar hot water heaters are hot enough for a good shower or washing dishes, but not hot enough to say make a cup of tea from. Which is a good thing as if they were you could very easily burn yourself in the shower really badly.