Point of use water heater or tankless water heater. If you have one I want to hear from you.

[ParisApril]

So I am in the market for a more energy efficient way to heat my water. I would like to one day be able to run my entire house off solar panels. Our roof faces south so it would be perfect. Right now I have the traditional North American water heater, a giant tank. I was thinking about getting a tankless water heater that we would install and it would replace the tank water heater. You save because it heats the water only as you need it. However the hot water still has to travel through the pipes to get to where I am and that wastes a lot of water while waiting for the hot to get to the tap. There are point of use water heaters that you can install under the cabinet for sinks that just heat for that particular tap. They are quite a bit less expensive at less than $300CDN per unit. They are electric which would work with solar panels.

Do you have either of these and how are they working for your family?

TIA.
April

[TinyFrog]

I have a whole house tankless water heater, however I have not used it yet as the house is still under construction. I responded because I wanted to let you know that an electric tankless system is a huge electric demand and the solar panels may not be able to handle that kind of demand. Of course I have no idea what it can handle but I just wanted to make sure you are aware of this. Electric is also not as efficient as the gas ones but gas has to be vented.

We went with electric because we did not want to deal with gas. Besides the gas used, it also needs to be vented. We know we will not be able to run ours off of solar. Your smaller one could me alright though.


Hopefully in a couple of months I can report back to this forum with our results. My plumber thinks we're doomed for failure because he knows someone with the same heater but smaller version but it couldn't keep up with the demand of the shower, tub and sink all going at once. You know, real life usage

[BusyBee]

I want to know the same thing.

[francesca'smom]

We had a whole house tankless water heater installed just before winter. We switched over to propane rather than use electric - our old tank water heater was electric.

it does take forever for the water to reach the tap. it's caused us to reduce our hot water usage, becuase many times we can easily just use cold rather than wait. I have often thought an under the sink heater would make much more sense for places like the bathroom. However the demand on the hot water would still turn on the tankless water heater.


You can get tankless heaters that are compatible with solar water heaters. You could put a solar heater on your roof, which would preheat the water before it gets to the tankless water heater. that would cut down on energy use since the tankless w.h. would then not have as much heating to do.

Also, if you go with gas, as others have mentioned, you have to vent it. In our case, it's in our somewhat outdoor furnace room, which has (basically) a big hole going to the outdoors. (Long story) The tankless water heaters do not do well in freezing temps, so make sure whatever venting you have is not cooling down the area where the water heater is installed.

We haven't had any problems with not enough hot water. it's been great with the shower dishwasher etc. OUr old tank water heater couldn't keep up as well as this one.

[SabraMamma]

Originally Posted by wateraddict

I responded because I wanted to let you know that an electric tankless system is a huge electric demand

We had one in our last home and I would have to agree that the electric tankless water heaters do use a lot of energy. We were in an older house, about 30 years, and had to have a lot of electrical stuff switched over to be able to handle the new demand. And then each time we would run the hot water the lights in one of the bathrooms would flicker- that was the only place, but it was a direct result of the energy demand for the heater.

I would also agree that it takes a long time to get the hot water from the heater to the sink/shower/where ever you need it and we too also stopped using hot water for things like washing hands/faces at the sink. A lot of water was wasted as we waited for the shower to heat up. I have heard that you can get some sort of pump to make the water move more quickly from the heater to the source you are using, but I honestly know nothing about this.

With those as the negatives, we definitely saved about $40/month on the electric bill after installing the heat-on-demand system. The financial savings and the knowledge that i wasn't using energy all day long to heat water that I didn't need hot were great bonuses!

[ledzepplon]

Originally Posted by SabraMamma

I have heard that you can get some sort of pump to make the water move more quickly from the heater to the source you are using, but I honestly know nothing about this.

I can tell you a little bit about this because we just had to repipe our entire house and considered the tankless, but ended up with traditional. If you get a pump on your tankless hot water heater, it basically circulates your hot water through the pipes so it will be hot when you turn it on. Of course this uses energy, so they come with timers so you can have the pump running at times when you know you'll be showering, etc.

The drawback of the pump is that it reduces your warranty on the hot water heater, usually from 20 to 10 years. There is one type of pump that requires the installation of a button in all the rooms where you have a hot tap, and this (if I remember correctly) keeps the warranty intact. But you have to push the button about 15 minutes before you want to use the hot water for it to work.

We ultimately decided to forgo the tankless heater since we have small kids and I'm home with them all day, therefore our hot water needs are somewhat difficult to predict and I didn't want the headache of no hot water when I needed it. Also, they are still quite expensive instaled and my dh knows a lot of people who have them who have had neative experiences with them so far. We decided to wait and watch, and perhaps next time we're due the technology will have improved.

[francesca'smom]

Originally Posted by ledzepplon

I can tell you a little bit about this because we just had to repipe our entire house and considered the tankless, but ended up with traditional. If you get a pump on your tankless hot water heater, it basically circulates your hot water through the pipes so it will be hot when you turn it on. Of course this uses energy, so they come with timers so you can have the pump running at times when you know you'll be showering, etc.

I'm confused about this - So while the hot water is circulating and being pumped for those fifteen minutes, does that mean the tankless water heater is running the whole time? that seems like a bigger energy use than just running the hot water until it gets to the tap.

It takes about a minute for hot water to reach any of our taps. it took the conventional tank water heater that long too.

So far we haven't had any negative experiences with our tankless, except a scare when the outside temps got really low and we thought we had frozen it.

[pumpkin]

I'm confused.

Does it take longer for hot water to reach the tap with a tankless water heater than with a traditional water heater? Is that because it takes a while for the tankless heater to heat the water? It seems like the time actually traveling through the pipes would be the same. Oh, and does it matter if you have a gas based tankless water heater?

[ledzepplon]

Sorry about the confusion--I'm feeling a bit like a dunce because I forgot one key part of our problem: we were going to be going from two water heaters to one tankless. Since we have the two right now, there is a shorter distance from the heaters to the taps anywhere in the house than there would be from the tankless.

Sorry! I can understand why my previous post didn't make sense.

[ramlita]

Ah! I'm glad you clarified about the distance being traveled.

I just wanted to add that we have a tankless heater for the whole house, and we LOVE it

We had it installed in the basement directly under the kitchen sink so the hot water would travel as little as possible between the two.
We use other taps/showers less often, and don't mind waiting a little longer for hot water in those places.

It runs on propane. It uses so much when it's running that regular flexible copper tubing isn't enough to support it, so we had to have black iron installed. That expense was the part I wish I'd known about when we were planning things. I'm not actually sure how much energy it really saves, given the amount of heat it generates to get the water hot so quickly.

We may well just be breaking even energy-wise, with the real value in the peace of mind of it all. Peace of mind that no fuels are being burned while we sleep, while we're out all day, or when we go somewhere for the weekend (and don't think to turn off the water heater the way folks with tanks might)- and peace of mind that we always, always have whatever hot water we need. DS was born in this house, in a 150 gallon tank in the living room. Everyone took showers that day, and then there was laundry to catch up on. We never had to give a thought to our hot water supply. Needless to say, that rocked

We can go a long time without using hot water, so I'm psyched that we're not keeping a bunch of it waiting for when we do use it.

[bigeyes]

What kind do you have? We have one that I absolutely hate. The water takes forever to heat up, it isn't instant like they claim, and it wastes a lot of water down the drain while I'm waiting for it to heat up.

In Hawaii we're on catchment water and I really don't like running water down the drain waiting for it to heat up. : I want to switch to solar first chance I get.

[PenelopeJune]

I'm glad to read all this information. We're talking about building a teeny little house, and I definitely want a tankless heater, both for the energy savings and the space issue. (Our house in planning will be between 500-800 square feet...not a lot of spare room for a giant tank!)

Has anyone noticed any savings on their bills with the tankless?

[bigeyes]

NO. Electricity is very high here, and since ours is electric....

Definitely going solar. I can't tell you how much I loathe ours. People here go on and on about how great they are and I just don't see it.

[GoddessKristie]

I'm interested in one of these so I wanted to revive this thread. If you don't mind, could we name names? If you have one and love it could you say why and who makes it? If you have one and hate it could you do the same?
TIA It's wonderful to have a place where everyone can share their experiences!

[straighthaircurly]

When it comes time to "go solar" for you, don't try to meet all your needs with photovoltaic panels (produce electricity from the sun). Instead start with solar hot water heating as it is very cost effective. Then you can use the tankless heater to finish boosting the water temp up to what you need (if it needs to at all).

I'm not sure whether a whole house tankless heater or individual point source heaters are better given that you surely have the typical trunk and branch style plumbing system in your house. When we build our house we will do direct lines to each plumbing fixture as studies show it is more efficient for distributing hot water.

[bigeyes]

individual source! We have one for the whole house, and I'm sure that is part of the problem. It's wasteful because you run so much cold water through the pipes waiting for the hot water to reach the kitchen or the bathroom. It doesn't make sense to have one heater for the whole house if you use this type.

I think that is my main problem with ours, the builder wasn't thinking about how they work when they installed it, or they would have put one near each source. But ours is close to the master bath and even so, it takes too long to heat up, imo. If I had been involved in the building of this house I would have chosen solar instead.

[Porcelain Interior]

Love my tankless heater!

It does take 30-60 seconds before the water gets HOT. What I do is save the water for the garden and things like that.

You also can just turn the hot on a smidge and not run it full blast.

I think it's worth the slight inconvenience. I'm not sure how much water it wastes, but if you have in place good conserving appliances, front loading washer, water saving shower heads I think it all evens out.

You can buy a buffer that instantaneously heats the water at the source while the bigger system is kicking.

I can see that being good at the kitchen sink. We've thought about getting one before, but we just have the big whole house sized tankless heater.

I love it.

[zinemama]

We have a Rennai tankless water heater for the whole house. It was spendy but we got state and federal tax breaks on it. We have gas heating, so there was nothing to convert.

It is a big energy saver. In terms of the time it takes for the water to get hot, I honestly can't say there has been any difference between the tankless and the tank system we had previously.

[francesca'smom]

We've had no difference in how long it takes the hot water to arrive since converting from a tank to a whole house tankless. the tankless heater is in the same location as the old tank was. The cost to run gas lines to a bunch of individual point-of-use heaters wasn't feasible for us. Electricity is really high here (thanks Enron) , so electric point of use heaters would have been ridiculous.

It's saved about half our electric bill, from average @120 a month to $60 a month. 1800 sq ft house. We installed the propane water heater and furnace at roughly the same time so it's hard to determine how much propane is goinign to hot water and how much to heat. We don't get propane deliveries during the summer. September to May was about $600 at $3.23 a gallon for propane, but we supplemnt our home heating with wood, so again difficult to break down.

it's Noritz and we think it's great. One thing we didn't check is whether we can run a solar hot water heater into it, and in retrospect I would definitely check that before purchasing a unit in the future.

[sunnysandiegan]

Thanks so much for all this fabulous information!!!

I am looking into a tankless water heater for our townhome. We currently have a 40 gallon tank in the center of our townhome and it uses gas. There is no electric outlet in the water heater closet. The door on the closet has metal mesh at the top and at the bottom for ventilation. This closet is literally no larger than the tank, but the tank and the closet sit up higher than the regular floor height. Also, the side of this closet shares a wall with the interior closet that houses our furnace (back wall of furnace closet). The furnace closet is also raised with a crawl space underneath that is easily accessible (removable panel from hallway and space goes under both the furnace and water heater). The furnace closet has an electrical outlet.

I know someone in our townhomes with a tankless water heater and they love it! However, their water heater closet is on the outside of their townhome, so ventilation was not an issue for them. They hired someone to do the work and they like the tankless unit, but would not recommend the person who did the installation. They felt the ventilation for our unit (center of townhome, nowhere near an outside wall) would prove to be too costly.

My father is a retired electrician and lives nearby. He would be willing to do the labor for us, at least what he is skilled to do, which so far has been anything I have asked (door-to-archway, replace drywall, replace baseboards, install awning, install ceiling fan, replace garbage disposal, fix dryer vent in wall, etc...we've lived here 8 years and he has helped us with labor a lot, even though he has only lived nearby for just under two years). I haven't mentioned this particular project yet, though... Every time it comes up, he is out of town. LOL

So...got any wisdom to share regarding ventilation issues? How about gas tankless unit without an electrical outlet nearby? I read somewhere even the gas models require electricity.

I also would appreciate folks naming some brand names to get me started on my research.

Thanks!