Installed a tankless water heater in Nov. and a woodstove in Feb.

[strategy400]

Installed a tankless water heater in Nov. and a woodstove in Feb. My natural gas usage in orange.

 

[Wood Hunter]

That's my plan too.

 

[rwh63]

who needs hot water!

 

[strategy400]

who needs hot water!

It's nice having an endless supply. My old tank finally gave out after 30 years. Takes a little longer to get to the tap though. You have to plan for it lol.

 

[peakbagger]

I must admit I am spoiled with my solar hot water system. I could not recommend someone doing one today as the upfront cost is steep but it does crank out the water with no muss or fuss.

 

[mar13]

It's nice having an endless supply. My old tank finally gave out after 30 years. Takes a little longer to get to the tap though. You have to plan for it lol.

We almost switched from tank to tankless, but there would have been a lot of retrofitting required. Regarding length of time to get water through the tap, is that because the heat from the heat from the hot water sitting in the tank is not being conducted through the water & pipe outwards towards the tap?

 

[peakbagger]

The old way of installing hot water heaters in the basement was to run pipes straight up and then horizontal to a pipe going up through the floor. Heat would natrual rise up the pipe keeping the piping and the basement warm, then cooling down and dropping back to the tank. This happened 24/7 and cut down on heater efficiency but the water was warm up to the faucet. Folks figured that out and switched to heat traps on the outlet of the heater that stop this thermosyphoning or just put in loops of pipe on the outlet. That keeps the heat loss down but the trade off is it takes longer to get hot water. One company had a setup that would pump water from under the faucet back to the inlet of the hot water heater until the water under the sink got above set point. It saves heat but costs a bit to install. The other minor point is pipe size the hot water uses. There is less volume in a 1/2" pipe than a 3/4" pipe so a fixture fed from a half inch pipe will heat up quicker. One tip is to run a 3/4" pipe to the the shower and 1/2" pipes to all the other hot water uses. This reduces a drop in temp at the shower if someone else suddenly used water elsewhere.

 

[Solarguy3500]

I must admit I am spoiled with my solar hot water system. I could not recommend someone doing one today as the upfront cost is steep but it does crank out the water with no muss or fuss.

^This.
I'm loving my new solar hot water system which is set up to pre heat the water before it goes into the existing electric water heater. We got it installed in November, so didn't get a lot of good production over the winter which I expected. But now, we're starting to get some good solar days and it's working great! In fact there have been a couple days where the electric water heater hasn't even cycled once. To illustrate, here is a screenshot from my consumption monitor on a cloudy day. Water heater usage is the light blue:


The last couple days have been great solar days. Here's the last 24 hours:


I agree on the upfront cost. When I got mine I caught the tail end of the MA solar hot water rebate and got $4,000 off and was able to finance the remainder using the Mass Save 0% interest HEAT loan. I'll also be getting a check for $2,000 for Alternative Energy Credits in the next few months. The MA rebate program ended at the end of 2020 and if I hadn't been able to get the rebate, I probably would not have done it.

 

[strategy400]

We almost switched from tank to tankless, but there would have been a lot of retrofitting required. Regarding length of time to get water through the tap, is that because the heat from the heat from the hot water sitting in the tank is not being conducted through the water & pipe outwards towards the tap?

Sorry for the thread revival. The hot water takes longer because the burner in the tankless has to warm up the heat exchanger for a number of seconds and the heater reduces water flow during that time. Then the warm water still has to travel to your fixture and warm the pipes along the way. But once it's there it lasts as long as desired. I greatly prefer it to a tank.

 

[DBoon]

I greatly prefer it to a tank.

Do you have hard water? Do you get scale on the tankless heating elements and/or how often might you have to clean scale off the heating elements? Just curious.

 

[strategy400]

Do you have hard water? Do you get scale on the tankless heating elements and/or how often might you have to clean scale off the heating elements? Just curious.

I'm pretty sure we are on well water from our water co. I flush it yearly with vinegar and very little scale comes out. 6 years in and it's still working like day 1. I had a plumbing co. come in and give a quote, he poked at his iPad for a couple of minutes, didn't look at ANYTHING, and spit out $6000. Really, $6000 even.... I went to home cheapo and bought a kit with everything I needed and installed it myself for under $1000. The hardest part was getting up on the roof to install the plastic tube exhaust hose through my existing hot water heater flue. And really that wasn't that hard. It kind of looks like a shop vac hose. The heaters are so efficient that there isn't much heat coming out of the exhaust, just c02. The unit I installed was a Noritz EZ40, using the 1/2 inch gas line that went to my old tank. I did have to source a high volume flex line from the valve to the heater at a local plumbing supply because home cheapo didn't have it. It required one with a certain BTU value (120,000?). So far so good.

 

[Dieselhead]

I’ve been running a noritz on well water for 16 years now without a single issue, zero maintenance. hopefully you have the same good luck!

 

[DBoon]

I have heard that one of the keys to success with a tankless heater is being aware that they need treatment for scale and flushing periodically. Sounds like you are on top of that.