Tankless water heater - one shower got cold
debn1951
10 years ago
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10 years agojackfre
10 years agoRelated Discussions
Tankless water heaters....one more advantage
Comments (16)No desire to start water-heater wars. I'm not a plumber, just another schmoe with the experience I reported and this particular emerging opinion based on that. My life -- as most others, I suspect -- has been lived in houses with myriad poor design features. My current house with this water heater tank configuration is certainly among them. The tank water heaters I've owned in my life have always failed in exactly the same way -- they begin leaking like this one did. In my (limited non-plumber) experience, I've never known a tankless heater to fail in this way so brought forth the observation that I think that is an advantage of tankless installations. If I'm wrong about that, I'm happy to learn about it. However, I live in a neighborhood with hundreds of tank water heaters in homes built in the late eighties and early nineties none of which have drip pans or any other configuration designed to prevent containment of leakage such as I've just experienced. The replacements that are made from time-to-time -- installed by licensed professional plumbers and inspected and signed off on -- do not include pans either. I agree they should, but I find it hard to believe an entire city/region should have such installs and replacements throughout if its not "code". I didn't know tankless heaters would fire without water flowing through them. (Have never known one to clog or leak either -- even some that are 20 years old.) Have never encountered that. All I know of have fail-safes built in that will not allow that to occur. No objection at all to differing opinions no matter how they're stated....See MoreOn-Demand Electric Tankless Water Heater Questions
Comments (17)Tankless heaters have used as a marketing idea that they will increase efficiency by not having hot water sitting around in a tank all day not being used. It's an easy concept for consumers to grasp, but it's not true. On an electric heater, the difference in the energy factor is very small between a tank and a tankless heater. A tank heater will be in the area of 0.93 and a tankless might be 0.95 - not enough difference to talk about and certainly not enough to provide payback. That represents the amount of heat lost through the walls of a well insulated tank. With gas heaters it's different. The vast majority of the efficiency gain is in the lowered flue temps. Second is not having the heat loss through the center of the tank. For your situation, what you should know is that a properly installed and operating electric tank heater is extremely reliable and efficient. Get yours replaced or repaired and the TPV properly routed to the drain so that it doesn't cause damage. Since you have lost confidence in your heater, I would just replace it rather than repair. Make sure that you are addressing thermal expansion issues that might have caused the TPV to open. If you want more space, consider a stacking washer and dryer and eliminating the sink. The front loading LG's are full size (huge inside) stack and don't use much water - eliminating the overflowing washtub issue. That would be a cheaper way to get space than a tankless heater and they are great machines....See MoreTankless Water Heater - Should I get one?
Comments (10)jake, thanks for taking the time to answer me! lol! Sorry about the typo - I meant $1K! It is a one story house with no basement. My current electric water heater is in the attic and if I decide to go with a gas lowboy that will be in the attic too. Re my comment about the unsightly pipe running up the side of the house to the attic: I was confused about this too. My main water pipe from the street is on the east side of the house - the gas line will come in on the west side of the house. So (if I am understanding correctly) what they will do is extend the water pipe (currently hooked to the electric water heater in the attic) across the attic and down to the tankless unit on the west side of the house and then back up again along with the gas pipe. Does this make sense? I admit I am having trouble understanding how the water part of this works. Re venting: If I locate the tankless unit in the attic, I doubt I could vent to the side of the house - that would require about 15 feet of pipe to get to a side wall when the roof is, oh, so close. I wonder if the vent can be elbowed toward the back part of the roof and not the street side of the roof. I don't want to see the vent from the street! I doubt if there are any code issues about putting the water heater in the attic - all this would be done with city permits. About the water heater being in the attic - well I currently have a 40 gallon electric water heater in the attic in addition to my air conditioning unit being up there too! Scary, right? A tall person can stand up in the attic so it's not that bad to work up there. My DH was wondering if the water heater could be installed in the laundry closet on the main floor of the house right above the washer and dryer. That would solve a lot of problems, wouldn't it? I am starting to lose steam on this project. I can live with the electric water heater and the electric dryer. But, I just want to be able to boil water properly which I can't seem to do on my electric stove! I swear a propane tank outside near the kitchen could solve that problem quite easily!...See MoreElectric tank or tankless water heater v. Propane tank or tankless
Comments (8)If you're really sure you want tankless (and you kinda seem to be), I'm not going to argue with you. I'll just say a couple of things and then I'll bow out. Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on these matters. They just interest me and I hope to be more energy independent in the future, so I read up on them. I always welcome corrections from knowledgeable folk. First point: IMO electric resistive heating of ANY kind basically just doesn't play nice with PV, off grid or on. The only time it really makes sense is when you're off grid and your system produces more energy during the day than you can store in your battery. This can also apply to some extent if you're intertied and your utility pays you wholesale or less when you sell your power, essentially penalizing you for conserving. Either way, dumping your excess PV energy into water heaters is one way to store it for later use. However, it should be obvious that to store that energy, you have to use traditional storage water heaters, not tankless. Second point: Peak demand matters. It matters to your electric utility, and it matters to your bill. You probably know more about CA rates than I do, but it appears to me that right now California is more into time of use (TOU) metering than peak demand metering. However, more and more utilities are adopting peak demand metering for residential customers (they've had it for business for ages). So even if you're not dealing with it now, it may well be in your future. Demand based metering watches your power (not just energy) usage. The higher it is, the more you pay for all your electricity. In one demand scheme, you pay a surcharge based on your peak power usage (in kilowatts), In another, the price they charge you for every kilowatt hour you use depends on your peak usage -- the higher your peak, even if it's only once in the month, the more you pay per kWh that month. Let me give you an example of the second scheme. Let's say your house's big energy hog right now is an electric range.. Most of the time, you just use one or two surface units at a time. So your peak demand is relatively low, and you pay (say) 14 cents per kWh most months. But when you cook Thanksgiving dinner, you have all the surface units going, plus the oven, and a microwave. On that one day, you have a much higher peak demand. Your utility takes note. And that month, you pay 20 cents per kWh for EVERY kWh you use all month. So even though that month's usage is only a little higher than usual, the final bill for the month is MUCH higher. Now imagine what could happen to your bill if you add an appliance that increases your peak demand every day of every month. Guess what: when it comes to peak demand, tankless electric water heaters are MONSTERS. Think about it. With its mild climate, California is a great place for heat pump storage water heaters. That's what I'd get if I were you. Not tankless, and definitely not electric tankless. And that's all I have to say about that....See Moredebn1951
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