Thread: Tankless water heaters?

Anyone have any input on the savings generated by installing the system? I'm looking at this primarily for an investment property to keep utility costs down.

Originally Posted by J08M3

Tankless hot water heaters are the way to go. We install lots of them in the houses we build. No matter what size your house is they can be used. 98% efficiency too. A nice option is to combine one of these with a solar hot water heater. This way the tankless is only used if your solar hot water isn't hot enough.

Nice. I bet you could save a ton of money with that. I might look into it, since we are in the process of buying our 1st house also and ever since I saw this townhome which had (this new to me concept of tankless water heaters) I was hooked.

J08M3- sorry if this is a stupid question but can a conventional water heater be converted to a solar water heater? Reason why I ask is that the home we are looking at has a farily (1 year old) water heater and it would be easier and hopefully more cost effective to convert instead of buy a solar one.

Originally Posted by Domesticdemon

Nice. I bet you could save a ton of money with that. I might look into it, since we are in the process of buying our 1st house also and ever since I saw this townhome which had (this new to me concept of tankless water heaters) I was hooked.

J08M3- sorry if this is a stupid question but can a conventional water heater be converted to a solar water heater? Reason why I ask is that the home we are looking at has a farily (1 year old) water heater and it would be easier and hopefully more cost effective to convert instead of buy a solar one.

It depends on what kind of water heater you have now in your house. The idea behind solar heating water is you send an anti-freeze mixture up to your roof where it is heated by the sun. In NY we can hit 90 degrees in January and 160 in summer months. The anti-freeze then comes back to your heater and through a heat exchanger it heats your domestic water. In the case of only reaching 90 degrees in winter the water then goes to your tankless hot water heater where it only needs to be raised another 30 degrees to be hot. This is much more efficient than heating city water that comes into the house at 55 and needs to be raised almost 70 degrees.

Originally Posted by Waldoonay

Anyone have any input on the savings generated by installing the system? I'm looking at this primarily for an investment property to keep utility costs down.

I've done the math (which only can be compared for where you live) comparing conventional oil fired boilers to a natural gas fired tankless hot water heater. I've come up with numbers of between 2.5 - 4 times more expensive to heat water with oil than one of these tankless systems. More info on this posted on my green building forum:
Cost of Oil vs. Natural Gas to heat domestic water - GreenBuildPost - Green Building Forum

by the way the Green Modular Build thread I'm running on here Green Modular Build has a Takagi TK3 tankless hot water heater. I'll try and get some pics.

I was just curious how many people made the switch to tankless water heaters, and how satisfied they were with them. Any noticeable savings on utilities?

I'm very happy with my Rinnai unit. My utilities have gone down a slight bit despite the fact that I have three people in my house this winter as opposed to two last year at this time. The savings would be more notable if there were still only two of us splitting utilities. My water heater is in the crawlspace. It was firing a lot to keep the water hot 24 hours a day during the winter. The tankless setup eliminates the need to keep water hot 24/7.

There's currently a $300 credit on them by the gas company here so I thought it might be a good idea to try it out in my home first (not big, 1800sqft).

I got a $100 credit from the gas company, but the 30% federal tax credit is a much bigger deal. The tax credit was around $800 on mine if I remember correctly.
Tankless Tax Credit - Rinnai

Tankless is what we use on allllllll of our investment properties for many reasons....

1.) if the house is sitting, then you don't waste energy keeping water warm

2.) Most houses have a jacuzzi and they don't have to wait for warm water, and when they are done, just drain the jacuzzi, so no chemicals to deal with...

If you are close to SC, i am pretty sure we have a few setups at the shop sitting around, construction has been a little slow lately, but its picking up... got 2 new houses this week!!!

I've installed both in houses I've built. I <3 Tankless.

I have done it one three homes and honestly it depends why you want them. I have mixed feelings about mine.

On a vacation home they are great. Since your not heating the water when your not there but have instant hot when you arrive. I use to just flip the take heaters off but its nice to not have to screw with that.

Unlimited hot water is nice if you have a big jacuzzi or large family and hot water runs out. Or when you just want to use more then you have! Keep in mind the bigger the house if you want ultimate hot water in more then a few spots you need a even bigger unit or more then one.

Bad side is installation and unit cost. Normal 40-50gal around here is 800-1000 installed. You will pay that just for the unit dependent on you need and could pay a lot more. If you retrofitting you will need to redo the vent, could have to use a bigger gas line ect... They are more up front and can be a lot more to retrofit.

Other bad side as great as they are in vacation homes in my primary home the savings is very little to none. Instead of using a smaller BTU burner to heat the water now you have a huge BTU flash heater. So when you take that long shower or fill up that huge tub the meeter is on over drive the entire time the water is on. I saw very little change in my natural gas bill and not near enough to offset the upfront cost of the unit and install in the time I will own the house.

I had two 50gal conventional tanks originally so the space savings would be nice but honestly its in a basement I don't use so the added space isn't noticed for me.

I have one at my place in Italy. Works like a charm unless the pliot light goes out. But its old technology in Europe.