Tankless water heaters and recirculating lines: Good deal or not?
Crystal Alexander
4 years ago
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live_wire_oak
4 years agokas4
4 years agoRelated Discussions
Do I go tankless water heater or wait for 75-gal gas heater?
Comments (22)The reason we have 2 tankless heaters is so both of them are close to the point of use, which equals less wait time. I also drew our house plans to make sure my hot water use areas were "clustered" because of this. Due to the piping in our double wide, we have to wait up to 5 minutes for hot water from a tank heater. Ridiculous. I have played around with my parents' stuff and have never waited more than 10 or 12 seconds for hot water because their heaters are also near the point of use. Their and our tankless heaters are Rinnai, btw. The only instant hot water I have ever experienced was in a really nice hotel... ;-) I don't know how big our current tank is, but we often run out of hot water for our family of 4. I'm looking forward to never dealing with that again!! Vonda PS Hello to a fellow Arkansan. Might not be the greatest state in the Union, but it's home. :-)...See Morerecirculating pump vs. local/point of use tankless heater
Comments (9)Donno if this helps, but we bought a 2 bath house with the old,disconnected hot water tank still in place, very close to the kitchen, and laundry room. it had been replaced with a tankless propane (rural) unit, 30 feet from the kitchen and 50 feet from the bathrooms. It was plumbed to the bathrooms first, and in series, thence to the kitchen. The first fix was to have a tee to the kitchen end installed at the tankless unit. We are leaning towards the electric point of use system for the kitchen, to fill in and then thermally cut out when the tankless gets hot water to it, though the plumber, upon speaking with the electrician, recommended we go with a recirc sysstem, which i think is rediculous, given our main heater is tankless. If I had it to do from the beginning, i’d skip the propane and use a combo solar pre-heat to a heat storage tank in our cellar (we‘ve installed a battery backed up 12 kv solar pv system) and electric point of use units for both the bathrooms and the kitchen and laundry room. As it is, we’re going to go with at least one electric point of use heater....See Moretankless water heater - 50 gl water heater???
Comments (19)There is a LOT of disinformation on these forums about on-demand tankless units, ESPECIALLY the electric units. First, energy cost savings is NOT a reason in itself to make the switch. No reason alone is sufficient. It is the total package, in light of your particular lifestyle, that will dictate the pro-con outcome of the decision making process. First, tankless units save space -- a lot of it, especially electric units that do not need to be vented. In Texas we have no basements, so that can be an important issue. Second, an electric unit is unlikely to blow up, unlike anything using natural gas. Third, there is an endless supply of hot water, which in a successive-morning-shower household like mine, is a really important issue. And finally, yes there is some documented comp fuel savings (electric tankless over electric tanks, or gas over gas), that is really offset by the added initial cost of the unit plus upgraded electrical service or gas supply line sizing. Moreover, there ARE full-house electric units out there that provide plenty of water, unless you plan on taking two showers simultaneously while also doing your laundry and running the dishwasher! And if that's your bag, you can run 2 or more electicals together. Or get a really big gas unit. Bottom line, nearly every nay-sayer of tankless units ignore the pros and focus on a single con - cost, cost, cost. Well, we all don't drive a Ford Focus for a reason. Some of us enjoy our Buicks, Porsches or Camrys even though another car would get us from point A to point B cheaper while using less fuel etc etc etc. Full disclosure: I have a Steibel Eltron Tempra 36 whole-house electric unit. Love it. My electric bill went up nary at all....See MoreDoes Tankless Hot Water Heater = Inconsistent Hot Water?
Comments (36)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....See MoreNorth Texan
4 years agoJake The Wonderdog
4 years agoCrystal Alexander
4 years agoKathy Eker
4 years agoNorth Texan
4 years agoJake The Wonderdog
4 years agoNorth Texan
4 years agoJake The Wonderdog
4 years agoThe_Lane_Duo
4 years agoLiz888
8 months ago
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