Does anybody know anything about tankless hot water heaters. I will be moving shortly to a house with all electric and will be converting to natural gas. I am seriously considering getting rid of the 80 gal electric HW heater and replacing it with a tankless job.

Does anyone already have one? If so, did you install it yourself?

 

I've heard they are ok as long as you dont try and do more than one thing @ a time. Like the laundry while U shower.

 

How about the newer, larger units? They cost more(like $1,500) but supposedly don't have the problem you mention.

 

The bigger larger ones will work for multiple use. Remeber that they have to be vented and to hook up a power vent is like another couple hundred bucks.

I looked into several different brands and found the total cost was just to high to justify getting one. For a unit big enough to heat water for a family of 4 and able to run multiple uses with power vent would have run close to $2000 in this area.
If you have a family and high water usage I think you would be better off staying with what you have. The biggest saving really comes from times when your water heater would be sitting idle heating the water for long periods with no use.
In a couple year the kids should be moving out ( please) and I am looking at installing one then.

I have installed a couple of them for other people and it is not very difficult, there really only appears to be 2 companies that make them. They are just the same units sold under different names.

 

My Dad installed only tankless system- Oil Burner fired. NEVER had a problem like you've mentioned. Advantage, you are only heating water in one location. Not a separate system for domestic hot water. A tankless system always has hot water on demand, and RARELY "runs out" (as long as the burner is rated for the dwelling's demand). I have had all four of my family taking showers one after another and never had to adjust the settings. Another advantage, when the power goes out, I simply run a jump wire into the firematic (after dropping the circut breaker) and fire up the burner. I have heat for the house, and domestic hot water. Down side? in the summer, when there is no demand for heat at the thermostat, you are still running the burner for domestic hot water. I guess there are pluse's and minus's for everything. At least Oil is cheaper than gas (in the Northeast, anyway).

 

I've been looking into it for several years.
I am going to get one but total cost is an issue.
I am going with electric myself, then it will be on the same circuit as the emergency gen. so I will have hot water in an extended power outage. My genny isn't big enough to run it and anything else, so will have to take showers by candle light.
But the other main cost. People who have had them here take them out with in 6 months becasue they plug up from the hard lime water we have here. A tanked unit only last about 4 years if ran unmaintained here before it is full of lime. My solution that I am going to try is a filtering system installed right before the unit.

Temporarily, I have thought about installing one of the single units on each of the showers. Hopefully most of the lime would be settled in the tanked unit.

If the 80 gallon tank provides plenty of water (which it should, I am using 40 gallon with 2 pre teen daughters, wife and myself). If the only thing you are after is energy savings. Put a programable timer on the Electric HW heater. Have it shut off 1 hour after everybody is gone thru the week, then come on 1 hour before the first person ussually gets home. Have it shut off thru the night while everyone is asleep and come on 1 hour before the first alarm goes off. Then run it during teh day on the weekends.

My brothers father inlaw did this and saved over $40 bucks a month on his electric bill. Unfortunatly for my house there is no set schedule. When I go to work I go in at various times and come home at various times. Or I am often up working on projects for the ofice all night. So there is no time that I can set to not to need hot water.

 

Since in Mexico the Natural gas goeas hi since 4 years ago, I swich to tankless water heater. Mine is a BOSCH and it works just fine, the one I have can't heat the water as much as the old tank heater but it's still fine to take a shower.

If your pipes are not insulated, and the heater is far from the faucet you are not going to have very hot water in that place. I need to install 2 heaters in order to have hot water to run the diswasher. I plan to buy another heater shortly.

You can take and endles shower without run wothout hot water. Here these heaters are called instant heaters because they heat the water on demand.

There are 2 sistems with and without pilot. I have the one with pilot, i suggest the pilotless.

As a reference we cut our gas bill about 40% our heater cost about US300.00

 

When you say filtering system. Are you referring to a water softener? We have a whole house filter before our Culligan water softener.

 

You should be fine I would think. As long as the water going thru has been treated. Sofetned and filters you shouldn't have a problem.

I am unsure how I am going to tackle this house if I do.
I have been researching several options and would like a softner, thinking a reverse osmosis. But they are very expensive atleast what I've found so far. I'll probably install a carbon filter right before it too. Unfortuantly living in an earth berm home all my pipes are ran under 10" of concrete so there is not a feasibale way for me to put a softener and filter on the main and have treated water thru out like I would prefer to do. I'd have to cut thru the concrete floor in the middle of the house and build a closet for them.
We are shopping for a new home now so we'll see what the next one is. It's going to be an above ground frame home and hopefully have a basement. Then I can do it just how I want with the whole house softened and filtered. Then I wouldn't be concerned about installing a tankless.

 

As a Professional Building Designer I've looked into these for several of my clients. The big thing to look at is how fast they will generate hot water. When using electric on-demand heaters, it was typically better to use several smaller units. The electrics just didn't have the capacity to say take a shower and run a bath. If you look at the flow rate, many require you to use low-flow shower heads.
The gas units, however, seemed more capable of supplying the entire house, but at greater cost.
I've found the electric units useful in vacation homes where my clients are adding a bathroom. Rather than upgrade the existing HW heater, we locate a small electric heater under the vanity and that typically just supplies that one bathroom.

 

Thanks for all the replies! Still have time to decide as we're not in the new place yet.
Mainly I would install one because of the savings. We don't have kids yet so I would guess we would have greater savings since it would not be used as much. I think I would definately use gas since that is what I will be switching the whole house to.

 

What are the installations costs like? I've seen these at home depot and lowe's and always wondered if they worked well. The floor space savings alone is enough for me to buy it.

-Fatz

 

Close friend of mine put one in -- spent a bundle -- LoVeS iT.

 

How long ago did he put it in? It seem hard to find #1. someone who has one #2. someone who has one for a "while" Then again, I guess at some point it was hard to find someone with indoor plumbing too!
Do you know what model he installed and what size house? Thanks.

 

If the 80 gal. is a Sepco/Vaughn Hydrolined, I would hang on to that for a while. They aren't like gas water heaters. They can last for 10, 20 years. It'll buy you some time to research the on demand heaters.

If you are going to install a heating system there may be another option. If you were to go with a hydronic system (hot water baseboard) you could install an aqua-bank. It's a zone in it's self. It's similar to the "tankless" mentioned in one of the posts, that uses the water from the boiler to heat the water. The difference is that instead of a coil installed in the boiler there is a storage tank with a coil. Water from the boiler is circulated through the coil in the storage tank heating the water. In the heating season the boiler is hot most of the time so it's efficient. In the summer months the boiler only runs when you need hot water. That's what I'm going to install in my house.