Get a tankless on one or more of the shower/dishwasher/laundry and be able to downsize the remaining tank, if there is one?

if I ever moved to a new house would be to replace the water tank with a tankless one.

Our only regret: At the time we bought it, the people who installed it did not understand it as well as I did - so I couldn't get all my questions asked. We got one large enough to run a shower and an appliance simultaneously, but didn't realize we didn't have the water pressure to make it work (we're on well water). So we are under-using our heater.

Slightly longer until we get hot water, and we can't trickle warm water for washing veggies (you have to run at a rate for the heater to kick on, otherwise it will fry itself up - the thing I understood better than the plumber did - he insisted I would be able to trickle it.). Small prices to pay for much lower gas bills and unlimited hot water.

And I'd have to say it's saved us a lot of money on our propane bills. We can wash a load of clothes while someone takes a shower. But since the heater is in the basement and the shower on the 2nd floor you have to run the shower for about 45 seconds before the hot water gets up there (the house was built in 1912 but we re-piped in 92, so the pipes are adequate). We also had to upgrade our well and tank to optimize the heater. You can't just dribble water through a flash heater, in order for the thing to work properly it requires a certain minimum flow rate that our old pump couldn't produce.

before my wife retires. our hot water heat is 12 years old and I plan to replace it with a heat pump water heater. The efficiency is much better than the resistance heater water heater we have now.

I have a hot water heater that's supplemented by our geothermal unit...the few hundred that saves a year is one of the ways to make a geothermal unit cost effective in WI.

a couple years ago we installed a high efficiency heat pump/air conditioner for heat and air and we're well pleased with it. It uses a new type freon that is under higher pressure and it uses a variable speed compressor rather than one that runs then shuts off to regulate the amount of output and it still heats all the way down to 5 degrees F, no resistance heaters in it. It uses the outside air. We have too many trees to be digging up the yard for a ground source heat pump/air conditioner or we'd have gone with one of them for even more savings.

This heat pump is saving us a ton of money each winter over wood pellets which saved us a ton of money over propane so best I can figure the new style hot water heater will save us money too.

We still use our wood pellet stove on those really cold and windy days but with it running at the lowest setting it will run at. We're saving 5 to 6 hundred bucks a winter now by using this heat pump as our primary source of heat.

We're old people so we keep the house at 73 to 74 degrees summer and winter

This is especially important in areas where it gets cold in the winter.

Turn the tank water heater to the lowest setting possible, then feed into the tankless. This will take care of any household's hot water needs, regardless of the weather, and conserve energy at the same time.

We're currently in the negative temperature range & have had been in that range numerous times in more than a decade we've owned a tankless. Our water is ~55 year round, since it is well water. No need to perpetually (or pre) heat water before it gets to the tankless.

We'd have no hot water at all during the winter without the tank of pre-warmed water.

when the temperature outside was -12 F. We get single digit temperatures regularly during the winter (either above or below zero). It heats it to 122, with no trouble at all. We haven't tried any higher (love to set it lower because it is silly to heat it higher than we need it, but the pressure from our well water means we need to run a bit of cold water with it to get enough pressure for the shower.

It'd deep enough in the ground that it doesn't get as cold as city water at similar temps.

anywhere I've ever been.

A couple of winters ago, the whole town was out of water for awhile because some sections of the main lines froze.

All I can tell you is my personal experience is that in a winter comparison, in the same city, city water is warmer than my well water.

A lightning hit took it out and he was too broke to change out the whole thing so I helped him replace the electronics and the sensors with regular mechanical thermostats, we wired them up to the same heating elements and it's been working trouble free for a couple of years now.

If we didn't have so many trees around here I would have gone solar a long time ago for hot water.

before the rules went into effect. Had I not done that it would have meant big money in remodeling to fit the new one. I am already looking at $20,000 to upgrade the septic. We are now required to keep our surrounding waterways suitable for aquaculture and that means close monitoring and probably a yearly permit.

My water heater was installed in 1973, so it could go out next month or last 20 more years. I have no clue.

1997 date but I doubt any preventative service done. It was a repo house. My new one is cold to the touch where the old one you could feel the heat escaping.

Last edited Mon Feb 23, 2015, 11:18 PM - Edit history (1)

1) empty a gallon the tank every month from the bottom.
2. turn off water and gas if I am gone overnight. I have a recurrent leak fear - this way it will only be a tank worth.

Now if I had higher ceilings, I would replace the rod.

I will go tankless next.

I have the last made american water tank, I understood they were all moving out of country when I bought mine. My mother got a new tank to late and she had to replace hers almost every year. But at least it was always under warranty.

I looked up the two 50 gallon units when we just got our house last fall...

Inspector dude said it is a great plan...they are just 10 years old and running great so they stay till they die LOL

Can't trust those plumbers.

Kind of like a bunch of sausages linked in the casing. You might need a hack saw to get the old one out but even with a low ceiling you can put a new one in.

I flush it twice a year, and put a new annode in, but the water heater was installed long before I bought the house. The warranty expired before i was born.

I have some doubts about that being an accurate age for the water heater.

So you could program the times for the most hot water use. But old fashioned water heater timers would work as well without the fancy electronics.

Back in our old house we put water heater timers on both water heaters - the big one that supplied the master bath came on for an hour twice a day; the little one that supplied the second bath, washing machine, and kitchen came on only one hour a day. If we needed more for major cleaning/washing days, there was a button to turn it on that would be overridden by the timer at the next shut off time.

That cut our utility bills by a significant amount a month, enough to pay for the timers in less than six months.

In our new house we have a solar water heater which works great when the sun comes out. It does have heating elements for those cloudy days but it doesn't seem to run very much at all.

have to be a water heater time. $35.00 outlay saved us $30.00 a month.

Rheem makes them; figure $150 to $300 above the price of the same size unit without the programmable thermostat.

I guess it makes sense to stick with them if desired. Thanks!

reasonable. These new ones sound expensive. I'm hoping this one will last awhile.

so you don't buy one based just on your family size, but on the number of people likely to reside in the house during that time period.

In other words, a retired couple getting a new water heater for their 4 bedroom home would be smart to buy the heater that would fit the young family they might sell it to in a few years. Not the small heater that a retired couple might need.

happy it is done. Talked with the contractor about tankless and was told that they were pulling more of them out than installing as the units were troublesome.

not a speck of trouble - other than low water pressure, which has to do with our water coming from a well.

When we bought ours, the contractors were clueless. I would not be surprised to find that nothing much has changed. No way I would go back to a traditional water heater.

... ago, and love it. You have to learn how to use it though. For example, most washing machines use cycles of cold then hot to make "warm", and the tankless doesn't do that well because the cycle is not long enough to get the hot up to temp. But once you figure those kind of things out, the lower cost and unlimited hot water is really worth it.

But the law didn't make stipulations about what standards had to take effect in 2015.

That's the DOE and the administration doing, issuing new regs to increase the requirements for efficiency.

We'll replace our water heater in a year or two. We'll foot the bill. But the DOE and the administration will claim the credit for increased efficiency. And it won't be an inclusive "All of us did this," but a "My administration and I did this" kind of thing, as though it was accomplished by him without a cost.

In San Francisco, where I live, space is at a premium, and a lot of places have water heaters placed right next to each other. It's difficult to remove one and shoehorn a new one in; it's crucial to find one the right size. This is going to create a lot of structural headaches for a lot of people.

Just curious because mine is in a corner and strapped to studs on both walls, a configuration that is quite common in single family houses in the East Bay.

eta: I'll probably go tankless with the next one but some of my lifelong CA friends claim that the tank of hot water is a good emergency water supply after an earthquake.

I live in a single-wide mobile home, and I've already got the largest water heater in the space that I could fit (three kids and me = lots of hot water). I had to replace my first one years ago, and went to Lowe's to get a regular one, not the crap they sell at mobile home repair places.

I'll be needing to replace this one soon, more than likely, as it's already more than fifteen years old. It needs a new heating element now, and I can't afford to replace that, much less get a new heater that will cost even more money than they already do.

My brother says he can build a solar water heater, which will at least help out if not replace the need for an electric water heater. I guess we'll look into that this spring, and maybe find somewhere we can put the water heater other than in the space where the furnace is. No idea where but I guess we'll have to figure something out.