Tankless water heater brand recommendation?

[Gem99ultra]

Gary, I agree with you somewhat on the location of the heater. I have mine on the side of the house where the bathrooms are, so I don't have a long wait. BUT - not at the kitchen sink! I've price the little 110V under-counter heaters, and they are cheap. Heck - I only paid $1600 for my whole-house propane/electic start heater - installed. I'm sure we'll eventually put a very small one in under the kitchen sink. Perhaps my house is different, but we do have 110v near every water source, so installation will be cheapl.

We only have hot water, the kitchen oven and fireplace on propane, but it looks like we're running about 50 gallons per year. We just filled up and it was $2.22/gallon. I have a different experience with the electricity bill though. Ours dropped in half, or more. Of course, only the propane heaters with electric start qualified for the tax write-off. I never found any all electric heaters that did, but the efficiency just isn't as great with all electric heaters.

On the other hand, your insulating the water lines and adding recirculating water is a good idea. I just don't like the idea of paying for electricity to heat 50 gallons of water 24/7 when I only use it a fraction of that time.

 

[belliott]

If you can change to gas I would advise you to look inti the Navien tankless units. Navien offers a model with a built in recirc pump and buffer tank. I install alot of them and I've had pretty good luck with them. I don't advise or install electric tankless units, so I can't be much help with them.

If you want instant hot water with any other tankless W/H then you would have to add a recirc line and a small tank type unit to recirculate the water thru. You can not circulate thru a regular tankless unit. It will cause the unit to cycle and heat constantly until the emergency cut off switch shuts it down.

 

[WayneB]

When I installed our system I put in a Bosch whole house On Demand Hot Water system and then added a 2.5 gallon tank in line so there is always 2.5 gallons of hot water for the sink. I found that the wife was rinsing dishes and turning on and off the hot water so there would be a delay at the main hot water heater for exhausting the propane fumes and this would cause a slug of cold water to come down the pipes. Now with the small water heater there is enough available hot water that no one notices the balancing problem. It is costing us about $12.00 a month for hot water now with three people taking showers and running the dishwasher daily. Before we got our hot water off from the boiler system and it just drove me crazy to hear the furnace come on in July when it was 80 degrees!

 

[txdon]

JD did you ever get your tankless hot water heater?
My under the sink electric tanked water heater for my shack in the back leaked so it's out and I'm considering a small tankless for the sink and nearby shower (used very seldom). My electrical limitations are a 30 amp breaker on 10 gauge wire which means low flow on the shower.