Tankless Water Heater

propane or electric?

I'd do some more research. I have a propane heated tank that I keep set at around 115°-120° F. The costs are pretty cheap, although I just filled my outdoor propane tank for $1.94 a gallon. In addition to the following, I've also read that the tankless heaters are prone to scale buildup, and become less efficient over time. For me, the savings didn't add up.

http://www.foodforthought.net/learn-more/blog/tank-vs-tankless.html

Nowadays technology is so advanced that water heaters are made up of no tanks that's great.

You may also wish to consider a Hybrid Electric Heat Pump Water Heater. They tout a big savings in electricity consumption, but are pretty pricey compared to a standard water heater.

Good Luck

Have you considered a heat pump water heater? They are highly efficient, and have the nice (for some places) byproduct of chilled air,...

Go Solar! This will cost more in the first place and you need a tank, but on the bright side you might save lots of money later on (a little bit dependend on where you reall are!).

Normally them are backed up with an electric or gas (not propane!?) heater system.

Here you can go electric . Top up the rest of the roof with solar cells and you have an offset to what you need for the water heating.

In summer you might not even have to use the electric backup!

Good luck!

I have a pool pump timer on my electric water heater. Nobody needs hot water at 2:00AM around my house.

'.....So propane is cheaper to operate......'

.

Unless the electricity is being used to power a heat pump, instead of just being converted to heat. With a heat pump, far more heat can be moved than could be created with the same energy.

Depends on the cost of your electricity Vs your propane.

Figure that for every $.01 per KWh of electricity propane is worth about $.25 per gallon on the heating break even point.

at what COP?...... remember: heat pump.

My point was that using a heat pump changes the analysis, making electricity more competitive.

Keep in mind that both gas and electric tankless heaters want lots of energy quickly. This means, as tcmtech noted, you'll need to make sure your electric service can handle the extra load. If you go with gas, you'll need a big propane tank and big supply line to go with it and you'll also need to vent the exhaust properly.

Just a couple of things that are costly that you'll want to take into account as yo tally up the total cost.

Tank less water heaters are popular throughout the rest of the because of their economy. They haven't caught on too much here, except for the whole house heaters. Small water heaters are located near where they are used, like in the kitchen or bath and are an eyesore.

One word of caution; they can produce scalding hot water instantaneously. I used one once in a shower and couldn't get out of the stream in time. Result was 2nd degree burns that took 2 weeks to heal.

I recently put an electric one in for a small bakery my wife owns, mostly because of space limitations and energy savings since no one is in the place most of the time. It seems to work ok so far, I do notice that on the faucets that are not rate limited if you crank them open the water is warm instead of hot but it puts out enough hot water for her use. The company had a chart based on location and expected water use to help pick the best one for your needs. I also selected the one I got because I read it uses more standard hot water heating elements and has a life time warranty for whatever that will be worth if we need it. My main concern with it are scaling and some of the circuity failing because it has electronics to adjust the heating coils based on flow rates instead of just on and off. So far so good however, although I did need to run some heavy wire to supply the 80amps it specified.

Just go with the instant-on tankless fusion powered water heater and be done with it. The couple of deuterium atoms it takes to raise the water stream to a comfortable 320K will never be noticed.

Oh, I'm sorry wrong century.

Everyone's situation different. I used LP for several years to heat my water. It became a major pain. My supplier owned the tank so I was forced to buy from them. They had a minimum order quantity of 100 gals and arrived if and or when they felt like it.

I pulled the LP heater, used it's tank to build a bread box solar heater and installed an electric tankless heater. Over half of the year my cost for heating water was roughly zero.

In my particular situation avoiding LP was the right move.

Make sure that the Tankless heater has both flow AND temperature sensors. Ours has only a flow sensor; if you use less flow than the sensor can detect (which I commonly do) then the heater shuts off entirely and you soon have cold water.

I had one in Chile almost 50 years ago, and it worked fine. It could well be that I was less demanding then, or that I simply don't remember any problems...

I've looked intensively at this whole situation, and went for a forty square foot solar hot water heater with electric backup on an eighty gallon tank. Easily pops 180 degrees F in six hours. Had to install a tempering valve, but of course, it doesn't cost anything to overheat the water. Heating coils never burn out, obviously. Never flipped on the breaker in more than two years. Read up, folks.

My personal experience with tankless water heaters is they are very hard to control temperature steady,and there is a "slug" of very hot water left in the line after turning off flow due to residual heat in elements.An individual heater at each faucet may be better, but a centralized one will not work as well as you visualize.I went back to a tank type.Today's foam insulation is very good, and unless you live in a very cold climate, it will keep water hot for several days without power,as occurred during a recent storm.

Good Luck..

Greetings.

I have a 13 year old propane hot water heater.

It supplys 103 gallons per hour as long as you feed it propane and water.

I choose one that did not need electricity to run a microprocessor or a fan.

When winter storms or trees cut of the power it still works the same.

I am very satisfied with it.

Oly

Discussed this about three months ago with a friend who a) owns his own plumbing business and is very successful, b) sells and installs both on-demand and storage type systems, c) had and no longer has an on-demand system. His experience was enlightening, since I was considering the same change, when my old storage tank was going out. As a result of his info, I have another storage system. Here are the considerations that led him to advise me to continue with storage type systems.

a) Distance of heater from various dispensers. This becomes important because of the amount of water that has to be run through the plumbing from the time the hot side is turned on, to purge the cold and deliver the hot water. And bear in mind that it has to be done EVERY time you turn it on, if the times between are more than a few minutes. Shaving becomes a pain, as does tooth-brushing. Expensive too, due to wasted cold water while waiting for the hot water to arrive. Most houses designed for tankless systems install the heater almost at point-of-demand, but most US houses are designed for a heater installed centrally and piped to multiple points-of-demand.

b) The nuisance of waiting for water, and the associated cost of running till the hot arrives.

c) Difficulty getting the temp right and maintaining it over the distance of the run. I don't fully understand why it is difficult, but he and his wife were constantly running into shifting temps. I suspect it's because of the kitchen sink and the bathroom taps being running distance from each other, and that created a varied load in the heated-water-delivery-capability, which, again, due to distance travelled, could not be quickly accounted for. It might also have to do with the fact that a tankless system, at least as we used them in Japan, had a constant temperature set at the factory, and adjustment of delivery temps then had to be done by adjusting the flow rates on the hot and cold sides. But since the flow rate had to exceed a certain minimum to kick the heater on, it tended at low flows to "cycle" while, at high flows, they ran into the problem of varying flow due to too many parallel runs to too many points of use, while the source was at a fixed pressure and flow rate.

All in all, he said that houses designed so that a tankless heater was planned into each point-of-use room made the tankless heaters much better buys, but that typical American housing designs made them worse than useless, due to the waste and irritation they produce.

His wife just says, "Don't ever put another one of those in my house".

Come to think of it, if you are married, it might be a good idea to see what she says already.

When I was building my new house at the Jersey Shore I originally had planned on going with 2 tank-less units, one for the first floor(kitchen, laundry and bath) and one for the second floor, smaller unit to handle 1 1/2 baths and closer to use. Spoke with 2 different plumbers who advised that cost to install could be over 2 grand each regardless of actual size. The size of the 1st floor unit had to be large enough to assure hot water in kitchen and bath at same time and with coolest water temp during winter. Add to that the cost every year to acid flush the coils (need blocking valves, bypass valves, acid fill connections and drains to collect acid and that's why installation runs high). Ended up with an AO Smith 50 gal. condensing 95% efficiency model that cost less than the 2 tank-less units would cost and the contractor put in a circulating pump that runs all the time. Hot water in kitchen is practically instantaneous and it's at the farthest point away. Had 12 adults and 7 kids over Thanksgiving and never ran out of hot water.

One more point on the tank type heaters. I think they are a lot more efficient and less expensive to operate than people think.

I've worked in people's houses for years. One thing that's constant, is that everybody has the temperature set way too high. Pure hot water out of the tap will be so hot that it will burn you without adding cold water to compensate.

I keep mine just slightly hotter than what's comfortable for a shower, so it takes just a dash of cold to make it perfect. The cost to run it on propane is negligible.

Same as others have mentioned. We have put in many,here in So. Cal., most all gas. Many different companies making them. Interesting thing--We often lose power (Last year, huge windstorm in San Gabriel valley), that knocked out power for up to 10 days for some. Guess what? No hot showers for that period, as the pilot is Piezio- electric--You need to put in battery back up, and have a way to access it. the gas fired water heaters had no problems--Matches work just fine. Also, you lose 50 gallons of potable water which we count on in case of earthquakes, which is another local problem. So, in my mind, conventional water heater, with solar added would be the way to go, if possible. mac

thanks for the info.