They probably would work! As I recall, the cheap foam pipe insulation is expanded polyethylene, which is probably what the noodles are made of as well (it's inexpensive stuff).

While we are on this topic...curious..my older home has yellow fiberglass insulation (several inches wide) wrapped around the pipes and it also has a clear plastic covering on it. I like it alot and it is really wrapped on tight and appears to do a good job. It looks original to the 1965 home. And other parts have a rubbery white sticky wrapping around the pipes. I saw this sold in Home Depot and they claim to assist with insulation and noise reduction. It also appears very useful and is tough to remove. This being said...are these good insulation means, or are the black tube covers work better. The tube covers to me seem useless because they are loose and are not a tight fit.

Also, are water heater insulated covers a sham? My gas water heater is always cold to the touch, what would an insulated cover actually do? I could see if the tank was hot to the touch, it would serve a purpose.

Your water heater SHOULD be cold to the touch. Think of it as a giant double-walled thermos. The blankets are better than nothing but I've never seen one that covers the top of the unit, which is where much of your heat loss would be.

I wouldn't mess with that old insulation more than you have to. One of the reasons it works so well is back in the 60's they used asbestos in the manufacturing process. Great for insulation, but bad for your lungs.

Being loose is not a problem. Most people simply do not understand how insulation works.

Foam insulation relies upon trapped are in the cells while fiberglass type insulation relies upon air trapped within the fibers but either way the actual insulating material is air. The physical material used to construct the insulation simply prevents the movement of that air. The higher the percentage of trapped air the greater the efficiency of the insulator. By example, consider the insulation value of a double walled flue pipe. In its simplest form it is just two pieces of sheet metal separated by an air space.

It then stands that while some of the foam insulation materials may appear loose, in fact, that additional air space between the pipe wall the inner wall of the insulating material is actually increasing the insulation value.

HW tank blankets won't do much if the pipes aren't insulated. The one problem I can see with pool noodles is they probably won't be fire retardant, whereas the stick-together stuff probably is. On the other hand, provided you keep them from heat sources - say, use fibreglass tape insulation closer to the hw heater, you'll probably be ok

I was born in 1947 and I can remember when water heaters had no insulation. They were simply an upright galvanized iron tank with a gas burner on the bottom in the same manner as the internal vessel in the modern water heater and water heaters were typically operated at 180degF. (My cousin Robert still has permanent burn scars on his face and shoulder from running into a water heater when horseplaying as a small child.)

In those days water heaters had no T&P valve. Instead they had a "Blowout Plug" that would literally blow out of the tank wall when the internal pressure exceeded 150psi. (They worked in the same manner as the freeze plugs installed in automobile engines.)

Water heaters had a thermostat on the gas control but there was no thermocouple or flame sensor so if the pilot flame went out and the thermostat called for heat it would blow raw gas into the house. I can remember many occassions when we would come home after being gone for the day and the moment the front door was opened someone hollered "GAS". That meant that the entire house was filled with the smell of Natural Gas, so Dad would open the front and back door and we would all sit in the car across the street for an hour or so till the house vented out praying all the while that the gas in the house would not be ignited by the fire in the old coal furnace, which would then produce an explosion and probably level the house. (These type of accidents were quite common in the early 50's).

I can remember when water heater manufacturers were advertising they were on the cutting edge of Space Age Technology with insulated vessels and thermocouple protected pilot burners, of course the insulation blanket was a mere 1/2" of fiberglass with a sheet metal shell over it. Tank walls were still plenty hot but at least you wouldn't receive 3rd degree burns from touching one. Oh, by the way, did I forget to mention that most water heaters had no flue pipes in those days either? They simply vented into the room but that was no problem because in those days fuel was cheap and state of the art construction techniques in those days left so many cracks and crevices that on a cold winters nite you could sit in the living room and watch the drapes moving from the cold drafts around the windows.

I find it very interesting to note that during the Viet Nam conflict we were supplying millions and millions of gallons of Jet fuel, Diesel Fuel and gasoline daily to the war effort and yet gasoline was only $.30/gal on the pump and Natural Gas was so cheap that it was commonly thought of as an industrial surplus yet within a year after we pulled out of Viet Nam we had a "Fuel Crisis" where the price of gas jumped to $.75/gal and we had to wait in line to get a meager 8 gal. One would think that when the war ended there would be plenty of fuel for civillian life. Is it possible that the oil companies had lost their Million gallon a day military customer so they now decided to raise the price to keep there profit margins the same? Oh, and don't forget, for every price increase the oil companies got the state and Federal Govt padded in their little tax increases as well, Ah, but thats another topic altogether.

Suddenly "Fuel Cost" was a household word and everyone began to tighten up. Houses were being insulated and caulked, speed limits reduced and we began to be concerned with "Standby losses" from water heaters. As the houses were tightened up it became necessary to make water heater flue piping a code mandate and people were encouraged to add "insulation blankets" to their water heaters. The problem with insulation blankets is that if they are improperly installed or if they slipped out of position it restricted combustion air to the burners and we began to see a severe increase in carbon monoxide poisoning in the home. As a result the Codes were again revised mandating that all water heaters MUST HAVE a minimum R-12 insulation. To meet the new standards the water heater manufacturers discontinued the use of fiberglass blanket insulation and began using cast in foams some of which are now providing as much as R-35. The Codes now state that insulation blankets are no longer required and it actually discourages the use of blankets. In fact, many local codes now prohibit the use of insulation blankets on water heaters.

Nineteen-forty-seven. That makes you a boomer. I was February, 1945. That makes me an accident. We were Catholic. OK. A "blessing." But, I was my daddys boy. And I was always interested in the stuff that was going wrong.

In those days, we heated with coal. Mom would call; and awhile later some SOB would dump a bunch of dirty, dusty coal into a basement window. She would order it by the ton.

Once invested, the coal could be shoveled from the bin into the furnace. But those of us who lived in the automobile manufacturing districts had stokers. Yes. They were a smart little gadget that would stoke the furnace on demand.

I never learned the technology, but it was pretty cool: you need heat? The stoker put some coal in the furnace and it would burn. The house was always warm in winter. And we did winter like the Eskimos.

HOT water? Well, yes, when the furnace was running there was hot water. Thats because, to get HOT water, you had to run an extra loop of piping thru the furnace and into an external tank (uninsulated.) The excess heat heated the house. Otherwise the mass in the tank was useable for baths.

If it wasnt winter. There was no HOT water. Today, that would be called poverty. In the last century that was called prosperity. I feel sorry for todays children. They will live in poverty only because the world has been given over to the money handlers in the temple.

And COLD? Yes. I and my contemporaries will be cold for centuries and feel nothing. I am sad that Necessity was the mother of invention, once. And today, it is a movement. Good thing that some people try to make the world a better place. Darned shame: that anyone should have to pitch coal into a firebox to keep warm. Darned shame.

OK. Enough of that. Lets talk: cutting wood.

Pinoke

the big problem w/ loose insulation would be AIR MOVEMENT--if the insulation will allow air to enter the insultation, travel along the pipe, and then EXIT, you will lose heat. The air has to STAY TRAPPED for the insulating action to work.

That would be part of why I'd want to wrap a Noodle to fit the pipe tightly--unless I could create air-tight seals at every seam and at the ends.

Talley,
You make a great point. But, it lacks one component: that there needs to be a motivating force to make the air move along the pipe. Heat loss is radial, hence the word, radiation. If the heat cannot flow radially, it will tend to stay in place.

In any case, when considering the efficacy of insulating with Pool Noodles, the loss factors are somewhat academic. After all, the OP is a dumpster diver with visions of grandeur. That is hardly the client for discussions of efficiencies.

On the other hand, OP is my kind of guy. Think of the cleverness in this recycling plan. I was going to do something similar. Imagine a whole bunch of these cylinders, cut to about 6" lengths and vacuum packed by a Foodsaver® machine. It would make a wonderful mattress.

Then we wouldnt have to buy them from posters at freeway exits. BTW, whats with that? Are we shipping drugs into the States in mattresses and then need to sell the shipping platforms off cheap?

See? A great idea; but the competition is too great. Besides, with Wal-Mart in the business, I wouldnt even give it second thought. I swear, I saw Sam Walton on a ramp holding a sign that read, "Homeless. God Bless You."

Ill bet thats just to avoid unionization. After all, what kind of blessing would it be to end up in hell? Ill tell you.

One where you wished there wasnt any insulation. Just ask my MIL.

Pinoke

born in 1980 and I'm loving all these stories ❤ 😁