Plumbers are fine for replacing water heaters and other plumbing regular/irregularities but there are VERY few who really know anything about water treatment. In most cases you can temper anything a plumber says regarding water treatment with a 40lb bag of softener salt. To "soften" water is to remove calcium (among other things like iron) from the water and that is commonly done by one of two methods. One method is ion exchange as done by a water softener. A water softener exchanges either sodium ions (if using NaCl) or potassium ions (if using KCl as a SALT SUBSTITUTE) for calcium (and other) ions in the hard water. That's it, no ifs, no ands, no buts, and no sales double talk. Simple chemistry and physics. Softening water is not black magic. It is physics and chemistry with a side of mechanics. No matter how hard sales people try (and want) to they can not violate the laws of physics or change the nature of chemical actions and reactions. The other is by a filter and/or membrane technology or distillation, but no simple filter will remove calcium. You would need a reverse osmosis unit large enough to service your entire house. You would not want to pay for that big an RO nor pay for the service and routine maintenance it would require and RO water would be very aggressive in your plumbing and it would waste a lot of water. NO magnet(ic) gizmo or electronic gizmo or "conditioner" will soften water but people waste their money on them EVERYDAY. Check out this URL for one story http://www.nmsr.org/magnetic.htm and there are many more on the net if you Google. Pick the right softener (not a box store brand), size it properly for your water conditions and usage and the SFR of your plumbing, and get a competent install and you should go 15-20 years minimum as you've already done with your Culligan. The MOST IMPORTANT thing is that water treatment begins with a water test so you know what needs to be treated or filtered out to get the quality water you want. Hit the Yellow Pages and call at least three local water treatment pros. Make sure you call at least [b]one of the big dogs[/b] like Kinetico or Culligan for comparison and at least a [b]couple independent pros[/b]. Give each an opportunity to offer suggestions and provide you with a quote to meet your water treatment needs. IGNORE ANY THAT DON'T TEST YOUR WATER THEMSELVES as they can't speak intelligently to water treatment without knowing what needs to be treated. Ask lots of questions. Softening the entire house or just the water heater (bad idea)? Warranty, parts & labor or just parts, how long and on exactly what? Install, permits required, licensed plumber? Routine maintenance and costs? Do they stock parts? Response time for emergency (water leak) calls? If they don't explain things to your satisfaction that is a good indicator of how you'll be treated after the sale. Are all your treatment needs being addressed? Ask your neighbors if they have any water treatment experience. They might tell you who's good or who to avoid. Come back here and post the specific recommendations and hardware components with the costs and we'll give you our opinions.

Check again. The Local HD has a 50 gal direct vent WH on the rack. GE brand. Not sure of the price. Around $500-$600 I think. They probably special order others if you can find someone who knows where the special order catalog is located. Also check a local plumbing supply house. That's where you find the more specialized size/btu models.

riellebee So I'm going to rough-in some numbers: Range: 15k btu/h Fireplace: 80k btu/h Furnace: 75k btu/h (x2) = 150kbtu/h water heater 200k btu/h (x2) = 400k btu/h Total potential load: 645k btu/h - again, an estimate. You can check your furnaces if you want to be be sure. is it likely that you would have enough things on at the same time to exceed your 425k btu/h service? - Yes, it's quite likely. What happens when you exceed the capacity of the service? The gas pressure drops and the range and the gas logs will just not run at full capacity - no big deal. But the things like the furnace and water heaters will throw error codes showing low gas pressure. The water heaters are likely to have that problem anyway, because at 30' of 3/4" pipe they are only getting about enough gas to run one of those heaters full tilt (the water heaters are variable input). The meter may be 20' away, but in actual length of pipe it's probably close to 30' including elbows. I can see close to 10' of pipe in the photo. The fact that the return line for the circulation isn't warm suggests it's not working. Fix that and insulate your pipes and your immediate problem will probably go away. BTW: Insulating the pipes is not expensive or difficult. Foam pipe insulation comes in 4' sections that just snaps around the pipes and uses self adhesive strips to hold it closed. It cuts with scissors. Even if you just did the exposed pipes in the basement you would reduce a lot of heat loss. My guess is that the builder can't really fix the "over-subscribed" gas service at a reasonable cost. One solution is to use a different water heater. A hybrid tank/tankless would solve the problem. The link goes to an AO Smith Vertex 75 gal water heater 100k btu/h and is 92% efficient and vents with the PVC vent pipe you have. I'm not particularly endorsing that brand - just using it as an example. It would provide you with plenty of hot water (you could run 1 shower continuously) and would reduce your BTU load by 300k BTU/h (gas service problem AND undersized gas pipe to water heater solved). In addition, because it's a tank of hot water - along with about 6' of hot water in the pipe - your wait would be significantly reduced even without a circulation pump. It sucks for your builder because it would cost them about $3500-4000 to fix it. They could probably realize some salvage value from the tankless heaters - say $1000-1500. But If they are only out $2-3k total I'd say they should consider themselves lucky.

200k btu (199k). Always. There's no compelling reason not to - and the higher btu will give you plenty of headroom when there are multiple demands at the same time - particularly filling a tub in the winter. So that you know, tankless will modulate the burner down to the appropriate level for given inlet temp and water flow. If you exceed the ability of the heater to provide hot water it will reduce the flow of water so it can maintain outlet temp. Pay attention to minimum flow rates to activate and to keep running. Rheem has always been very good on the min flow rates, but check the brand you are considering.