OT: Tankless Hot Water Heaters?

Try to make it as centrally located as you can. I hate it when I turn on the hot water, knowing the unit has fired, and it takes half a minute before the hot water comes out of the faucet.

K>Thanks Kingfish,

The outside of the tank is insulated. The flue is not. Look at the bottom of the water heater. It is a cone shaped flat piece of metal with a round fire under it. This doesn't scream efficiency to me. Most tank type water heaters haven't changed much over the past

I don't know how you would do it but see how many times a day your water heater lights and re-heats the water in a day with no usage at all. I think you'd be surprised.

Ok I must confess. My father saw a tankless at Quality Farm and Fleet for $529.00. He said that was a great deal. Well I waited and waited and watched the price drop from 529 to 429 to 329 and it sat there for a year. Finally one day I was walking around in the store and found that water heater brand new in the box for $100.00 so I bought it.

Also if loss up the flue is truly a big concern, an automatic

If your water heater dies, you have a given expense to replace it anyway so you need to remove that from the equasion. So you really only need to recover the cost above the tank type water heater caus you need one anyway.

I just think they are a really poor design. They had cast iron pots to heat water in 400 years ago, it was a flat plate with a fire under it.

Hey, if nothing else, it was an intersting discussion.

The instructions that came with mine said to set the temperature so that you have to add just alittle cold water while taking a shower. They claim that is hot enough. I set mine so that my wife had to add a little cold water cuz she takes a hotter shower than I can. That seemed to be plenty hot for us.

And if you have a really long ranch style house with bathrooms and kitchen/laundry at opposite ends, consider replumbing the house to have two instant water heaters at the opposite ends. Solves the distance issue and gives you redundancy.

We have two tank heaters, and they'll be changed to tankless when and as they die.

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I have Takagi tankless units at my home, my office and at three rental units. On the whole I have been very happy with them BUT there ARE a lot of issues with tankless installations, especially if you are replacing a tank-type unit. I finally ended putting up a page where I discuss some of the ones we have encountered, it also has a link to a pretty good OA Smith white paper on calculating the payback of tankless heaters:

Thanks MDT:

I didn't get the answer I wanted, but I probably saved a couple of grand. 8^)

It looks like I will be looking for a new NG tank type water heater. My

Jay

snipped-for-privacy@parag> I have Takagi tankless units at my home, my office and at three rental