A common feature on domestic dwellings in Israel is the solar panels mounted at an angle on their roofs, with a water boiler on top of that. Jewish dwellings have metal boilers, painted white, while Arab houses have unsightly black plastic ones. You can actually distinguish Jewish and Arab neighborhoods from the color of the boilers - apart from the inevitable fertility poles (minarets) of the Muslim Arabs. What used to make these boiler systems even less acceptable aesthetically was that they were connected to apartments below them by means of ugly black pipes running on the outside down buildings. One still sees it on old buildings, but I, unfortunately don't have a camera to photograph such a building. I've also been looking for a photo to go with this posting to show the solar panels and boilers on buildings, but the only one that has come up, is this one. It makes this posting political-environmental, because it shows the result of a direct hit of a Grad-type Katyusha rocket launched from Gaza on an apartment building in Ashkelon. This kind of abuse is reality in Israel for decades even before the Jewish State was re-established in 1948, two thousand years after the Roman occupation and destruction of their land caused most Jews into a diaspora.
Judging from the white boilers, it's unmistakably a Jewish neighborhood. Bombing civilian areas is a contravention of international law, according to Adullah, a Muslim human rights organization - that is when Israel tries to take out rocket launchers at locations among or near Arab civilian buildings.
Anyway, what I want to talk about is the long way hot water needs to go to apartments at lower levels of apartment buildings - that comprises the accommodation of most Israelis. I found it a bit strange, coming from South Africa where most middle class people live in sprawling suburban neighborhoods with each family dwelling having some land around it,- that is also common in the USA. My problem with the boilers mounted on roofs, is the amount of water that is wasted before hot water comes out of the faucet, two, three, four, five floors below.
The only solution as far as I know, is to install boilers as close as possible to where the hot water is needed and to circulated the water through the solar panels on the roof by means of small pumps. I think that is how it is mostly done in the USA. It means extra costs to move the boilers, install pumps and of electricity, but water is becoming a much more scarce commodity than energy. In fact, we have probably years back already passed the PEAK of water supplies. It is definitely the case in Israel with the level of her biggest source of water, the Sea of Galilee, being less than a meter above its critical RED LINE - even after the rain season. In addition Israel's population is ever increasing from Jews needing to leave their host nations because of anti-Semitism, or the "pull" to the land just getting too strong to resist.
On the other hand, boilers inside and even on the side of buildings can be better insulated against loss heat of water.
