Comments on: Water heating is a tankless job

By: Will

Will — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:36:36 +0000

Thanks! We’ll probably end up going with a traditional natural gas water heater (for reasons that I plan to write about soon).

Our crawlspace apparently drains really well, since it was only mildly damp while the water was leaking and dried out entirely within a day or two after we fixed that. There wasn’t any evidence of mold when we checked earlier in the year and now it’s too cold for it, so I think we’re safe.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:20:35 +0000

Good luck however you make the decision, but kudos for the analysis. Be sure to check in the crawl space for mold since you’ve had water spraying in there from the leak.

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Less costs more | GreenCouple.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:20:47 +0000

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By: Will

Will — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:35:43 +0000

Andy: We probably wouldn’t need much more gpm, but we might want higher temperatures (for washing dirty diapers) which reduces the output on a tankless water heater. We might also want to be able to wash clothes and take showers at the same time since we’ll be doing both more often. I think you’re right overall, though. Even if we vastly increase our water usage and temperature, we’d still be well within the abilities of an electric tankless water heater.

Very cool! Just last night, Maggie brought back some of her dried peaches. It’s amazing how inefficient electricity is at heating!

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:03:00 +0000

BTW, I just got 20 peaches cut up and in my dryer. I paid $4 for the dryer at a Salvation Army store 2 years ago (best purchase there ever!) and I picked the peaches myself the other day a $10 for 21 pounds. I still want to make a solar dehydrator, since this one takes 265 watts continuously, and most things in it take around 8 hours although I haven’t done peaches before. That’s about 2kW right there, yikes!

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:54:45 +0000

Even with higher needs (e.g. a kid) you wouldn’t need more gpm, just hot water more often. In either tank or tankless that doesn’t mean that you would need a larger system, it would just be on more frequently. More than 1/3 of my electric bill goes to water heating, so if I had the choice here I would go with a tiny tiny system that fit my basic needs and nothing more.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:13:34 +0000

Good point, Andy. Our biggest long-term concern is that if we have a kid and use cloth diapers, we’re going to want to be able to wash clothes in hot water. One of the good things about tankless is that even if we buy something more than we need right now, it won’t use much more electricity than a smaller one. Getting a 60-gallon tank when we only need 40 gallons (or less) is much worse.

Thanks for the reassurance, Linnea and Lori! I’m glad to know that there are other households out there that don’t need a lot of hot water at once.

Susie: We talked to the Lowe’s people earlier and they only have one electric water heater available that’ll fit in the crawl space (a 40-gallon low-boy). If I recall, it was about $350, but they’d charge $65 for someone to come out and inspect the crawlspace in addition to the installation fee.

Fred: It looks interesting, but I don’t see anyone selling them yet. Do you have links to people selling them directly?

Emily: That seems like a lot! A 40-gallon electric low-boy (which we need, because the crawlspace is low) runs $270-400. The estimate we got added on $400 for installation, which seemed high to us, although we haven’t gotten another estimate on that.

The electric tankless we’ve looked at have been $900-1200. There are some cheap ($300) point-source ones, but we’d want at least three so it makes more sense to go whole-house, I think. I haven’t gotten an installation estimate, but the plumber I talked to said that it would be no harder to install a tankless electric than a tanked electric, so it shouldn’t be more than $400.

The temperature differential depends entirely on flow rate. Bosch has a good one for about $1000 (the Powerstar AE-125) that will do a 50 degree rise at 3.7 gpm. However, at 2.2 gpm (about a shower’s worth), you’ll get a rise of 80 degrees (up to 131 degrees — it’s oddly specific about that).

I’m not sure what our incoming water temperature is, so I’m not sure exactly how much of a temperature change we’d want. 80 degrees seems like more than enough, though!

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:31:36 +0000

Wow. We were trying to make this same decision, and a regular electric heater was $1300 and tankless was $3500. Does the electric tankless you looked at alo cover the same 55-degree temp differential? And does your water come in at 50 degrees? Because 105 degrees is not a nice warm shower when it comes out the sprayer…

By: Fred

Fred — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:44:58 +0000

I encourage you take a look at http://www.ViridianTankless.com. Our company is manufacturing a new high-quality, whole-house electric tankless water that will surely impress you.

Regards,
Fred Huggins
Sales & Marketing
Noble Innovations, Inc.
Phoenix, AZ

By: Susie

Susie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:10:27 +0000

I was amazed by the estimate you were given, so I went out and looked (Lowe’s), and water heater prices are just all over the place! And it seems like you could get a couple of tankless ones for the price of a large super-efficient tank one - or, you could get a smaller tank one for a lot less money. It’s hard to know how much installation would cost, but Lowe’s would probably have a list of people to call - unless the big selection on-line is not readily available here in Indiana…