Anyone have any experience with them? Are they worth it or a, pardon the pun, pipedream? I think my water heater is about to go belly up and am thinking about getting a tankless, but just want to know if I will regret it.
You might want to think about a tune up kit if it is not leaking. They cost about $37 and are easy to install. (thermostats and elements)
I have one. I've had it for a year or so, and it has some upside and down downside. 1. Obviously you never run out of hot water, but the downside is that if power goes out, you are instantly out of hot water, as there is no reservoir. That's true of electric or gas, as the gas won't stay on in the event of electric failure due to safety shutoffs. 2. It does take a moment to get hot water to you, so you clear what is in the pipes, and then it starts heating. This isn't awful, depending on how close to the unit you are. My house, for whatever reason, has the hot water unit on one side (length wise) and the kitchen and laundry on the other. It takes a solid two minutes of running hot water to get hot water to the kitchen. It took a minute with the tank, but because of that wait time, it takes longer. The guest bathroom is over on the kitchen side too, so guess can forget about washing hands with warm water. I like them, though. But the way my house is built, I need two. A small one for this side of the house, and the large one for the bathrooms.
If you’re building new go with tankless but put a circulator on it so it’s instant hot water. Otherwise I think I just buy a high efficiency gas tank model. We have one of those in one of our rentals and it does a great job
The circulator doesn't run continuously though, does it? The guy that put our tank in was like "you can set a time to have it run," and I was like... I don't know when I'm going to want to wash my hands in the kitchen...
No it has a computer in the tank that learns your hot water habits. even if it’s off the lag is maybe 10 seconds instead of minutes. My parents have the same situation as you and it’s really annoying having to run two minutes of water to wash your hands.
We put one in when we built our final house in 2009. Norvitz (sp?), I think. So obviously we have had it a number of years. It is propane. I expect the 2022 units may have improved? We live in country, so do not have access to natural gas. We love it. I agree with comments above. With kids/grandkids/friends visiting and staying over it is nice to always have hot water. The wait time was an acceptable trade off. It is on our bathroom, laundry room, kitchen side of house. I just brief the guest staying upstairs on wait time, which is farthest point. Power outages are a draw back due to electronic controls. But hey. I have only had to have 1 part replaced. It was at the 10 year mark. Part was cheap. Forget what it was called. I have service arrangement for all my HVAC stuff with local guy that did all the new install when we built. Part is available thru interwebz. I watched him replace part, so I could do it if it every happens again (maybe save $50 labor). But I'm old and am cautious around shit that blows up, so will probably not. We put in a ventless model rather than vented one inside. It is mounted on outside back foundation under the wrap around porch which is 10 feet high on back. The foundation "crawl" space is walk-in, lighted, crush and run floor covered in plastic, dry as a bone and has a regular sized door. I told builder I wanted to be able to walk under house (not crawl) for any plumbing, air handler maintenance, etc. All my service (Bug, HVAC, Plumbing, etc.) guys love me. I do not miss draining tanks, cleaning out mineral sediment or replacing elements. Edit: After having electric for 1st 40+ years of homeownership, gas/propane hot water is glorious. I am glad we put in the 500 gal. propane tank. On-demand fossil fuel hot water is a luxury my wife deserved. I looked at solar, but the technology (and more importantly the local intellectual knowledge of the "experts" over here was lacking. Same with geothermal. That and we did not have flat, or clear, enuff acreage to accommodate it in a financially viable way.
