What do you know about tankless water heaters.?

Question

I know they are more expensive, but they use alot less power. Does anyone have one and do you like it?

Answer 1

Well, I just replaced my hot water heater last week as did 3 of my neighbors and did a lot of research on whether a tankless was the way to go. One neighbor went with the highly rated Bosch system and two of us went with the traditional tank water heater. What did it for me is that I ran the ROI (return on investment) for our usage and situation against the energy savings and discovered that the unit and installation of a tankless model would pay itself off in 25 years. This is largely due to the fact that the hot water heater with a tank would run on natural gas and the tankless on electricity. Where I live, electric is so much more expensive than the gas is and with the purchase and installation of the tankless model taken into consideration the savings were not all that impressive. And, because the vent pipes we presently have are 3" and the tankless takes 5" the cost to retrofit and route through the attic made installation almost as expensive as the unit.

Answer 2

I looked into this when my water heater took a dump. Yes they are much more expensive that a regular water heater but do save money. However there are things you will need to look into, for instance in our case the gas line to the unit would need to be replaced as it uses a lot more gas and the vent had to be repositioned as it was out of code. Also you will need to see how much water the unit you choose can put out at one time, the cheaper the unit the less it can produce, for us we needed at least 2 major appliances/ showers at same time and the ones we saw just weren't up to the job so went with a regular 50 Gallon type. Good luck.

Answer 3

I have heard good and bad about the tankless water heaters. Initial cost is high. You may also need new lines (electric or gas) run to operate it. Make sure that you have someone who will work on it if a problem arises. Many plumbers will install them but don't do warranty work or repairs.

Answer 4

I have one (sort of). It's a Noritz system and it has a 5 gallon water tank. The small tank is to keep enough water hot that when you turn on the tap, you get hot water really quickly without having to run, and waste, much water. As the water kept hot for immediate use is used, it goes into an insta-hot mode that heats the water as you draw it. Mine is a gas powered system. I really like it a lot. All of my life I've had to think about "has the dishwasher been run? has someone else recently taken a shower?" before I showered so there would be enough hot water for me. No more. It is an endless supply of instantly hot water. I also like it because with our house as spread out as it is, we would have had to have more than one big water tank to get the hot water to the taps in a reasonable amount of time. When you think about it, why keep all those gallons and gallons of water hot in a big tank when it can be heated on demand. I do think they use less power, but the amount you save isn't going to change your life. But man o man, are they ever convenient. All the hot water you want...anytime.