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Got one - it rocks. No mo cold water. With five of us taking showers every morning, it's a very good thing.
FYI - not inexpensive (about 2.5X the price of a 50 gallon gas fired tank water heater of high quality), but they are supposed to last much longer, and the bottom line is, an unlimited supply of hot water. They also supposedly save fuel. We just got ours two months ago, so I haven't actually looked at the bills to see if we've got any difference.
That's gonna be pretty expensive in the long run, unless you use a electrically powered heat pump to generate the heat.
Not really. A standard hot water heater is inefficient by design. It heats a large volume of water held in a storage tank and then keeps that water hot by constantly heating and reheating to maintain temperature. That same heat is lost through the insulation jacket of the water tank.
A tankless hot water heater only heats the water that is being used at that point in time. The water passes between chambers and is heated as it passes over a heating coil. There is no storage vessel. When you turn on the hot water tap, the water is heated. When you turn it off, it's not.
In the long run it is much less expensive (more than 50%) to use a tankless than it is to use a conventional hot water heater whether it's electric or gas.
I wasn't referring to the tank less heater. I was just saying that you shouldn't use electricity to heat water. It requires a lot of heat energy/power to heat water and electricity is more expensive than gas.
Not really. A standard hot water heater is inefficient by design. It heats a large volume of water held in a storage tank and then keeps that water hot by constantly heating and reheating to maintain temperature. That same heat is lost through the insulation jacket of the water tank.
Not quite on topic: But this really a question of the type of insulation. There are bunch of so called zero energy houses in Switzerland, that have giant water tanks built in that are used to heat the houses during the winter time. The tank together with roof mounted solar panels/heaters actually provide enough heat, so that there's no electricity or gas required at all.
(Well some folks like to be efficient and independent others prefer to depend on foreign energy sources. :D )
(Well some folks like to be efficient and independent others prefer to depend on foreign energy sources. :D )
I hear ya. I'm a big fan of living off the grid. One of my long term goals is to build a very energy efficient house that takes full advantage of passive solar hot water heating, geothermal heating and cooling, solar/wind based power, and gas for cooking.
As for using electricity to heat anything, I agree with you. It's very expensive in the long term, but it's not as expensive in the short term as say the up front cost of alot of the environmentally friendly solutions available.
Where I live now we have electric baseboard heating and window air conditioning. It sucks donkey *****. I would love to install a geothermal heating and cooling system but we don't intend to live here long enough to see a return on our investment. Instead we're going to install a heat pump and use the baseboards as emergency heat. Where we live it's too expensive to run a gas line, and I don't want to pay for a propane or oil tank, either, so again I'm stuck with electricity.
I got my first taste of using a tankless water heater when I was in Hong Kong back in November. Let me tell you, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Taking showers back at home was very tedious with 3 in the family, even with a fairly large tank. There was no way we could take 3 showers continuously without the third person being a victim of taking the "shower of death". The only disadvantage I noticed when I was in Hong Kong was that the hot water flow can't be too weak...otherwise the unit shuts off and you will feel it slowly get colder and colder in the shower, and by the time you correct it with more hot water, you have to wait for it to ignite again. The whole process takes about 10 to 15 seconds, should you have a really weak flow going through the unit while in the shower. Other than that. I think it is God's gift to humans. :D
I hope this thread gets some more posts; maybe a copy can be posted in the Europe forum, Tankless hot water is bigger there. I am thinking about doing something different, getting TWO electric hot water heaters, one around 10 gallons for one side of the house and a larger one for the other side and only using them in the spring & summer. Right now the hot water comes off the five-zone oil fired baseboard heating system. So I run a fairly large oil furnace year round. The reasons for the two water heaters is that on one side of the home is just the kitchen and a half bath, the other end are the full bathrooms & laundry. The reason I think Electric might work out for me in the non-heating months is just had a solar electric system installed (see pic). That pic shows 57 175-watt panels. Right now with the sun setting around 5:30 I am making 27 Kw, I expect to do close to 40-50 Kw during the summer. Anybody have any thoughts on part-time Tankless electric Hot Water if I also have solar electric?
Anyone know if you can relocate the water heater if you go tankless? Our water heater is at one end of the house and the master bedroom shower and kitchen are at the other end. It takes a while before we get hot water at the taps. I would like to move the water heater into the attic or at least the HVAC closet.
I got my first taste of using a tankless water heater when I was in Hong Kong back in November. Let me tell you, it's the best thing since sliced bread. The whole process takes about 10 to 15 seconds, should you have a really weak flow going through the unit while in the shower. Other than that. I think it is God's gift to humans. :D
I was going to say this type of system is pretty big in Asia where everything seems to run on Natural Gas or electric. My family in Hong Kong and Taiwan has older units where you have to wait to heat and manually ignite. The ones in China, that I have seen, seem to be more advance. There is absolute no waiting. Anytime you turn on the hot water, the thing automatically ignites and the water seems to get hot instaneously. Never ran out of hot water with the newer system.
I'm VERY interested. What is the cost of unit and installation? My home is electric but I'm not opposed to installing a propane tank just for this purpose. Just last week I had to get a plumber out to work on my water heater and I have to replace it about every 8 to 10 years. I have a deep well and the water has a lot of minerals in it, which cause pipes to corrode. I'd hate to drop a bundle on one of these units only to have to replace it for the same reason. Great thread to follow.
Anyone know if you can relocate the water heater if you go tankless? Our water heater is at one end of the house and the master bedroom shower and kitchen are at the other end. It takes a while before we get hot water at the taps. I would like to move the water heater into the attic or at least the HVAC closet.
We've got a similar situation - our master bedroom is on the first floor of the house, at the back "left" corner (as you face towards the rear of the house) and the water heater was at the front right corner.
Since they don't run pipes diagonally, the hot water pipes were going laterally 45 feet along the front of the house, and then longitudinally another 40-some feet to our bathroom in the master.
Since we already have a separate furnace in the basement under this master bedroom (it was an addition to the original house) serving just the master bedroom "suite" plus a small den, the gas was already there for it, so we just tied the tankless heater for that bathroom into the existing furnace there.
Then we bought another one to be installed into the place where the old unit was, to supply the other four bathrooms, the kitchen and the laundry (5 bedroom, 4 1/2 bathroom house).
Overall, it was a godawful expensive installation considering I went into this planning on two 50 gallon tank heaters hooked in series with each other - about $1600 installed. Instead, I spent $3200, but have two tankless heaters that are totally "right sized" for the installations they serve. And since that tankless unit serving our bathroom is right under the bathroom floor, when you turn the shower on, you've got hot water RIGHT NOW, and that's awesome! Before the wait was close to 90 seconds for the water to travel the 90 feet to the faucet.
We still have the distance issue to the bathroom in my office (the former master bedroom on the second floor of the house) - that shower is also about a 90 foot run to the new big tankless unit, but hey, it's not the shower I use all the time, so that's the way it goes! It would have been very hard to tie the new tankless unit in my master bedroom to it, so we went with what we had to that bathroom.
I hope this thread gets some more posts; maybe a copy can be posted in the Europe forum, Tankless hot water is bigger there. I am thinking about doing something different, getting TWO electric hot water heaters, one around 10 gallons for one side of the house and a larger one for the other side and only using them in the spring & summer. Right now the hot water comes off the five-zone oil fired baseboard heating system. So I run a fairly large oil furnace year round. The reasons for the two water heaters is that on one side of the home is just the kitchen and a half bath, the other end are the full bathrooms & laundry. The reason I think Electric might work out for me in the non-heating months is just had a solar electric system installed (see pic). That pic shows 57 175-watt panels. Right now with the sun setting around 5:30 I am making 27 Kw, I expect to do close to 40-50 Kw during the summer. Anybody have any thoughts on part-time Tankless electric Hot Water if I also have solar electric?
If you want to use solar energy to heat your house, you have to solar heat panels. http://www.ieatask24.org/howorks.htm http://www.powermat.com/
Solar water heaters can generate very hot water and have a high efficiency above 90%.
If you have enough of these (relatively inexpensive) solar water heaters and large water tanks you're definitely able to generate enough hot water for your shower and bath and maybe even to heat your house. (Oil and gas is cheaper than electricity).
Solar electric panels are way more expensive than solar heat panels and only have an efficiency of about 10%.
I would sell your electric energy rather than use it to heat your water.
But since you already have that thing installed and want to use that energy to heat your water anyway, I would use an electric heat pump which can easily double the heatpower of electric heaters.
Keep in mind that if you have a very well insulated water tank, it can be very large, you don't have to use that hot water right away. It will stay hot for weeks. It's basically a way to store your energy generated on the roof.
I've done quite a bit of research on this since I take long *** showers:
A few things that haven't been said...
You can get small electric units that work very well room by room. You can also get these in gas models... there is a HUGE advantage to this....NO MORE HOT WATER PIPING AROUND THE HOUSE! That means no heat loss from the pipes...heat loss heating up your house....and heat is almost instant...a matter of seconds. Oh also no more tanks...no more pilot lights always on to ignite that gas leak, etc.
These also work great for a special line to have warm water fill your hottub or jacuzzi...don't have to wait for the hottub or jacuzzi to do all the work of heating it up and you don't run your tank down.
The small units are VERY easy to install...in fact any on the forum who has modded their car just a bit could do it. You can also take an old hot water line...detach it and cap it. Then detach install it close to the room it will use, using the original hot water line to the shower and or sink, whatever, with the water coming in tapped from the cold water line split.
How about if someone is taking a bath at the same time a washing machine is being used? Assuming you don't have but one unit. Can it keep up with the usage?
How about if someone is taking a bath at the same time a washing machine is being used? Assuming you don't have but one unit. Can it keep up with the usage?
Usually wash machines have their own heaters. But if you have several showers hooked up to the same unit it might an issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by truemagellan
These also work great for a special line to have warm water fill your hottub or jacuzzi...don't have to wait for the hottub or jacuzzi to do all the work of heating it up and you don't run your tank down.
Many hottubs and jacuzzi use heat pumps. So if you'd use direct electric heaters instead it would be pretty expensive.
Also keep in mind that large heaters are usually more efficient than small direct heaters. I would consider direct heaters for a fast and convenient way to generate hot water. But definitely not a solution to generate hot water more efficiently.
If I build my house from scratch, I'd build it with a large well insulated water tank and well insulated pipes. So if I have a bunch of Sunny days I can store that heat in that tank for some time.
In the long run, this is cheaper than any other system.
we have one small one designed for a single bathroom, and one BIGASS one designed to handle at least two showers plus either the dishwasher or washing machine going simultaneously, or three showers at once. You do get a bit of pressure drop doing that - but no more than before, but the water stays hot. I do see that the increased demand causes the water to be delivered a touch cooler - we have it set at 130 degrees and if three showers are running at once, it delivers at about 118 degrees to the faucet - not a panic, you just adjust the faucet a touch and away you go. Most people's HOTTEST showers are only 108 degrees. Average-hot is 102.
Ok, so it's September and that means that winter is only a few months away. I'm thinking about installing a tankless water heater because last winter I froze my *** off on more than one occasion because my current heater sucks. I don't want to go through that again. :o
So my question is, who has a tankless, who's the manufacturer, and are you happy with what you have?
I read about them a little while ago as well, I was very interested, seeing as for about a month I wasn't getting any hot water for my morning showers causing a very irate Photic at work. heh. I saw a site that mentioned some larger ones can handle up to 4 showers at once. I kept hearing they were really expensive and saw some starting at about 600$ I was honestly expecting more. I guess the real wallet killer is getting it installed. *shrug*
That means no heat loss from the pipes...heat loss heating up your house....and heat is almost instant...a matter of seconds. Oh also no more tanks...no more pilot lights always on to ignite that gas leak, etc.
:o
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