Why no tankless water heaters Hsv/Madison (live, garage)

[RatSnake]

Lived in an older version of those tankless water heaters.
The system could not keep up especially if -
1. You take looong showers.
2. You do multiple loads.

That said, if I had all the garage space in the world, I would go for a tank heater - completely insulated. Not sure what the max efficiency you can achieve though.

[teookie]

I have a tankless in a Jeff Benton home. Love it. Endless hot water even when relatives are visiting.

[Emptynester1]

I have a tankless in a Jeff Benton home. Love it. Endless hot water even when relatives are visiting.

Teookie, this is for about how many people, and if you don't mind- what is a sample utility bull. Is it gas or electric? Thanks.

[Nlambert]

The house we want to buy once ours sells has a Rinnai tankless heater. One of my co-workers has one as well. She said when they built their house the gas company was offering a free Rinnai water heater if you bought your appliances through them (gas range, fireplace, etc..). She had theirs installed and loves it.

[teookie]

Over Christmas I had a total of 12 people living in my house. Never ran out of hot water or had any complaints about it from anyone.

Hard to say how much of my gas bill due to the hot water heater, since I have a gas stove and furnace too. I can tell you that my overall utility bill at this house is about the same as my old, all electric house was. And this house has 3 times the square footage.

[Emptynester1]

Originally Posted by teookie

Over Christmas I had a total of 12 people living in my house. Never ran out of hot water or had any complaints about it from anyone.

Hard to say how much of my gas bill due to the hot water heater, since I have a gas stove and furnace too. I can tell you that my overall utility bill at this house is about the same as my old, all electric house was. And this house has 3 times the square footage.

Sounds really great. I learned that gas needs to be run and a gas meter out in. But I prefer a gas fireplace and water heater. Not up on gas cooking, though I understand that this is the choice of chefs. Well your experience certainly shows that tankless can stand up to demand.

[LCTMadison]

The gas bill for my gas tank water heater is usually around $25-30/month. I would imagine it would be a bit less on a tankless. The only other gas appliance I have is a gas fireplace so naturally our gas bill is higher during the winter.

[FTG-05]

I have a tankless Rinnai (sp) water heater. It works pretty good within its limitations. Namely, it has to overcome a 80 degree water temp difference between the cold coming in (around 40) to the hot water output temp of 120 degrees. To make that temp difference up, it chokes water flow.

Also, tankless have minimum turn on water flow plus minimum keep on water flow requirements. In other words, it won't turn on unless you meet the min turn on flow rate (couple gallons per minute) and keep it on for the minimum flow rate (about half the turn on flow rate) - I don't recall our units actual numbers.

I plan to measure where our Rinai unit is and see if I can add a 40 gallon water tank heater in that location to prewarm the incoming water.


Another caution: tankless gas units have a PVC exhaust port (at least mine does) and it's about 3" in diameter or so and goes right out exiting just under the roof. This exhaust port is a direct access for super cold air - like the temps we've been having the last couple weeks - to freeze the water in the unit and stop all hot water flow. Not good. I've fixed this by putting in a $40 Walmart oil electric heater. Something to be aware of.

[FTG-05]

Since we lost power this week for a couple hours, another thought about tankless water heaters:

No power = no hot water. Our propane tankless still requires electricity to run. Now, I could have set up the genset, but the utility guys here got to it pretty fast and we got power back after only a couple hours. The Englander 30-NC kept the house warm, so that wasn't a problem.

When we lost power in Madison for four days after the April 28, 2011 tornado storms, we still had some hot water left when the power came back on four days later. With our 60 gallon water tank for the house and the 80 gallon for the main bathroom, we were still taking (short) hot showers every day.

Another thing to think about.

[Emptynester1]

Originally Posted by FTG-05

Since we lost power this week for a couple hours, another thought about tankless water heaters:

No power = no hot water. Our propane tankless still requires electricity to run. Now, I could have set up the genset, but the utility guys here got to it pretty fast and we got power back after only a couple hours. The Englander 30-NC kept the house warm, so that wasn't a problem.

When we lost power in Madison for four days after the April 28, 2011 tornado storms, we still had some hot water left when the power came back on four days later. With our 60 gallon water tank for the house and the 80 gallon for the main bathroom, we were still taking (short) hot showers every day.

Another thing to think about.

Well this is certainly a new twist that perhaps I could have thought of before. Tankless water heaters by definition do not store water! (Hitting forehead). Glad that your service was restored in a reasonable time. Thanks for adding this to the discussion. Along with storm shelters I would guess owning a generator is fairly common too. -- guess that's another topic.