tankless water heaters

[longshot38]

ive heard about the propane, ondemand water heaters but do they make an electric one? and do they infact use less electricity? thinking about when i have to replace my existing water heater, its a regular containment tank type.

any input welcome.

dean

[suzyhomemaker09]

I looked into these as well..I think their efficiency depends alot on your area, ie your base water temperature as they will only raise it so high. I had great hopes of having an endless supply of hot water. Only to have it dashed by our winter water temperatures.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

they do make electric , they use more electricity when running but run significanly less so usualy provide a net savings.

to adress the issue of winter water temp you could probably use 2 one to get the water warm the second to get it hot.

they make them in all sorts of different sizes they have under sink units that provide 1.6 gallons per minute to hole house units that are able to supply 4.3 gallons per minute and multi circuit ones for more than one demand at a time

i was considering putting a small under sink unit in below my shower to heat the already warm water once my existing tank electric hot water heater was unable to keep up with the demand of multiple showers 5 of us and any thing more than 2 showers and you are taking a cold one.

[idahodave]

I don't think whole house electric tankless heaters are a good idea. Had one, didn't produce much hot water. We needed to reduce the flow in our shower to get hot water.

The heat loss in a new electric tank heater is small. A gas heater has a flue through the tank, so gas heaters have a greater heat loss.

An electric tankless heater will need two to three times more power that a conventional tank heater. I'd bet you wouldn't save enough to pay for the wiring to an electric tankless heater.

[squeezinby]

My husband and I have been doing alot of resurch about this same subject. You can save money using the tankless if you are realistic about your hot water consumption.
Through our reasurch we have found that whole house modles don't really save you as
much as the point of use ones. With the whole house ones it has to have its own box and meter(depending on regional codes)/it draws alot of juice when in use. The point of
use ones can go just about any where and draws no more that an kitchen appliance. They even have some that us a regular outlet to plug into.
We are remodling an RV trailer to live in while we are building our house. We started looking into the tankless ones when making plans for the house,(trying to make it as Green as possible on a budget)then we started sprucing up the RV and found that we needed a water heater. We looked at the point of use ones and found that they where
better overall.(know special wiring,less of a draw on the power,Less expensive, easier to
replace than the whole house kind). So that's wait we are going with.

[citilivin]

We currently have a Takagi. It provides unlimited hot water. We have had 2 showers and a dishwasher running at the same time with no problems. Our runs on natural gas. I would personally stay away from the smaller units. They will run about $800.00 not installed.

[Dutchie]

I have never had any of the problems described above and I have a propane one in my house. So far I have installed natural gas ones in the rental properties.

[nathan104]

I recently purchased two of the medium sized electric models. These are not whole house but are supposed to supply hot water for up to two bathrooms. One thing you need to consider if replacing a tank water heater is the wiring cost. With the price of copper so high, wiring is expensive. And, if you had a regular tank water heater, I can guarantee you will have to run new wiring from the new tankless water heater all the way to your breaker box. Heavy wiring is required and can be expensive. They also require large breakers. Most require a 200amp service.

I am installing mine myself. The electrical savings for us should be pretty good. We are replacing two 50 gallon tank water heaters which are only used for showers and bathrooms. So, we will be doing away with the heating of 100 gallons of water at all times. We are leaving our third 50 gallon tank water heater in place which supplies our kitchen, laundry, and another bathroom.

If you are concerned about water temp, as they do only have a certain amount of increase they can offer, a lot of people leave their old water heater in place plumbed before the intake of the new tankless heater. You can either keep the tank WH set to its lowest setting or just use it as a storage tank and let the ambient room temp heat the water a bit. Ive heard of some people stripping away the insulation from around the tank to better let the room temp take effect on the water in the tank. Unless your tank is located outside or you do not keep your house heated in the winter, this can help boost the temp.

[dragonfly1113]

I havent made my mind up if i like the tankless better. I love the never ending hot water. But I am not sure on the savings at this point because i still dont know what is sucking up all our propane. I believe it may be our heating unit (brand new) I hope to get to the bottom of that very soon. I have only had my tankless since Dec. So it will take me a little while to determine if we are saving money. When we sell our house, would I get another tankless... probably not.