tankless - water electric

[mdhills]

We've currently heat our water with a natural gas water heater with tank, located in the garage.
This is close to laundry and kitchen, but the bathrooms are on the opposite end of the house and can take some time to heat up.

I was wondering if anyone has experience using electric tankless for heating water for a wing of the house.
Where would you normally place the heater?  (I think gas tankless would normally be mounted on the outside of the house, but believe electric often designed to be indoors)
Any advice on what has worked well or hasn't?

thanks,
Matt

[EightFingers]

Low flow faucets may not activate the heater. Tankless heaters need to have a minimum flow rate activate. Check this before installing.

[Roly]

We've currently heat our water with a natural gas water heater with tank, located in the garage.
This is close to laundry and kitchen, but the bathrooms are on the opposite end of the house and can take some time to heat up.

I was wondering if anyone has experience using electric tankless for heating water for a wing of the house.
Where would you normally place the heater?  (I think gas tankless would normally be mounted on the outside of the house, but believe electric often designed to be indoors)
Any advice on what has worked well or hasn't?

thanks,
Matt

 Do you have enough capacity on your electrical service ?   Electric tankless require a lot of amperage when your taking showers.   Roly

[rwe2156]

You need to throughly research this.

We have the same situation. We looked into electric, and on consulting an electrician about it, I learned the unit would require 3 (THREE) 30 A 240 volt breakers. So that was a no-go. This was to supply 2 bathrooms and 3 sinks total. Even though we had the panel capacity, he strongly recommended against it and said most people use gas.

Next we consulted with our gas company (we currently have propane water heater and range). All told, with the Rinnai unit and the install (burying 50' of copper pipe) it was going to run over $3000. Also, the heater needed to be mounted on the outside wall of the house.

So there was simply no way to justify that.

A recirculating pump is the most practical answer, however, I was told they can make noise, so choose the location carefully.

We haven't done anything yet. We turn on the shower, and 4 minutes later we have hot water........

[blackhat]

I would certainly look at a recirc pump before anything else.

[rlnguy]

+1 on adding a pump.
we had a recirc pump put in, a few months ago, and love it.
It's on a timer, so runs about 16 hours a day-have not noticed any effect on the electric bill.

[mdhills]

I would certainly look at a recirc pump before anything else.

We had a passive recirculating system when we moved in.
Amazing to have instant hot water, but....
I almost passed out when we got our first gas bill.

Matt

[fixtureman]

We had a passive recirculating system when we moved in.
Amazing to have instant hot water, but....
I almost passed out when we got our first gas bill.

Matt

Why would that raise the gas usage that much do you have insulated hot water lines.  That would just make the storage bigger

[mdhills]

Why would that raise the gas usage that much do you have insulated hot water lines.  That would just make the storage bigger

The passive systems have the hot water routed through the attic, and the return in the crawlspace and the circulation is driven by the cooling water with uninsulated pipes.  Pretty clever and worked really well, but expensive as energy rates go up.

Matt

[TDKPE]

I've seen recirculator systems with both a timer, so it will warm up the lines first thing in the morning before the showers start for instance, and with a manual push button 'start' switch, so you can start the pump with the push of a button.  I don't have such a system, and don't feel that I need one, as the cost of parts and labor would take the rest of my life to recoup with the cost of natural gas where I am.  But I've seen such systems, somewhere.