Tankless hot water heaters

Adamiscold wrote:I don't think anyone spends that much to heat hot water for a whole year? When we switch from our electric hot water heater to our oil burner I don't think our electric bill even dropped 15 bucks a month.

Our DHW is heated by natural gas in a regular 40o gal hot water heater & our gas bill last month was around $38.00. It pretty much stays within a few dollars of that figure year round since our heat is totally care of Dane Harman!
For that amount of $$$, I'm pretty satisfied & see no reason to change anything.

Besides the $ oil was running me for dhw, I had no space for a big tank in my utility closet. That's why I went tankless, electric so I wouldn't need any chimney & every cent that I spend in electric goes in the water, not up a chimney.

I have all low flow aerators on all the taps & low flow shower heads due to the fact that I'm on a septic system. My wifes does the laundry with cold water anyway, thats the new green "thing" to do these days. So I haven't run out of any hot water & it's an even temp. The unit I have runs on *60 amps*, not that its usually using it, but if need be it can really ramp up the juice. My unit has a dial adjustment for temp, it can get way too hot if you turn it up (not even all the way).I asked my wife about the electric bill, she said it seems normal that there was no jump in the bill...

Another consideration is that there is no tank to leak or blow, I remember how that is, I've lived through that twice in my life.

I should've done it years ago!

When I installed the oil fired water heater in 2002 my electric bill dropped $50 a month. That was great then, but with rising oil prices even the oil-fired heater costs too much to run.

I thought this thread disappeared...

Well, now I have some experience with tankless. So far, I love it. My tank started leaking, so I needed to replace it. I have very soft well water, so I won't need to worry about build up that is apparently a problem with them when using hard water. The installation went pretty well and I all-of-a-sudden have a bunch of space I didn't have before. My well is in the process of failing (maybe tomorrow, maybe in 50 years), and I have a lot of fine shale that builds up in the tank. I tried filtering the water, but had to change the filter almost DAILY. And I live alone. Now all of the tank build up will be in my septic system instead of my hot water heater. Another problem I have is methane gas in the water. When the water pressure or temperature of the water changes, the methane comes out of solution. Some of my tank capacity was always taken up with methane. Did I mention it's LPG? I haven't talked to anyone with an electric tankless that likes it. I also bought a washer, and have recently showered while doing a load of laundry. Totally consistent water temps, good pressure, just like livin in the city! I'll let you know if anything goes awry, but won't be able to tell you about any savings until next year when I can compare my propane consumption! I think the key is making sure you buy the correct one for your needs... there's a lot of research that helps before you buy!

BTW;
I think my electric unit was said to be rated for a three bedroom two bath home.

They only make about 1 or so gallons a min.@ 100F temp rise.That's not enough for most poeple.
DON

George-NJ wrote:BTW;
I think my electric unit was said to be rated for a three bedroom two bath home.

Yeah except if one person is filling a tub and another is taking a shower!
DON

I purchased a Prostar (made by Bosch) last year and I am very happy with it. I got it off E-bay for about $500 and installed it myself. It requires 3 -220volt feeds from 3- 40 amp breakers. I only had 150amp service to my house so I put in 200 amp service and installed a new electric box since mine was 25 years old. I also did the plumbing which is just a cold input and gives you the hotwater on the output side. I put this in because I was heating with an oil furnace with a domestic hot-water coil that made my furnace run when ever we used hot water. This was fine in the winter when I was heating, but got very expensive when the oil prices rose. I usually burned wood in my wood stove to keep the furnace from kicking on so much, but last year with the price of oil, we heated with wood and shut the furnace down. We also burned about 200gal of oil just heating water in the summer so this tankless water heater saved us there and also gave me a backup if the furnace broke down. The tankless water heater I bought that has 3 heating elements is rated for 1 appliance at a time. I have a wife and 2 kids and have not had a problem with running out of hot water. When we first installed it, the water temp fluctuated some until we got it adjusted (this unit heats only when you flow water and if set real high, it will heat the water quickly to temp and shut off for a few seconds until the water cools a bit which makes the water temp go up and down. when adjusted for your water flow,it works fine). As for the electric bill, we have not seen any change, it basically uses what the blower on the furnace used and the tankless heater only comes on to heat the water you use. The only thing that we needed to get used to is that when you turn on the hot water, it took a little bit before you would get hot water because my tankless water heater has about 25ft of pipe between the faucets and the heater that have cold water in them that is followed by hot water. My oil furnace kept all the water in all my pipes hot all the time, not efficent. I now heat with a Baker coal stove (Love It!!!) and do all my water with the tankless. The whole thing cost me $600 bucks to install but would have cost $700 for elec and $500 for the plumber which eats up the return $ and makes it a few years. Hope this helps, just my 2 cents.