VERY OT Water heaters without a tank

I insisted on having one put in our new house when we built it. I
loved it, lost it and the house in the divorce.

It was 20 years ago, we had a dishwasher , clothes washer and two
bathrooms with showers. Only thing we couldn't do was have two people
take showers at the same time. Actually we couldn't run the washer or
dish washer or shower at the same time. But I still loved it.

I did some online investigating a few weeks ago and found that there
are tankless heaters that can support more than one task at a time.

We will replace our current heater with a tankless when the current
heater goes bad. My son told me that his father replaced that fine
tankless heater with a standard one when his second wife didn't like
it. But then he got rid of her too, lucky her.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA



On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:03:54 -0500, "Leslie & The Furbabies in MO."
wrote:

I've been doing some pondering- I know very dangerous! BG

Living alone now, I realized I am paying to keep a tankful of hot water
heated for many, many hours without none to minimal usage. If I shower 7
times a week, wash 3-4 loads of laundry and run the dishwasher 3-4 times per
week then I have a demand for hot water about 9 hours per week. I am
heating water 24/7 which is 168 hrs. per week- so I am paying for almost 160
hrs. of hot water that I do not need or use. I don't see putting a water
heater with a tank on a timer since I need hot water during the day for hand
washing and small jobs and the cost to reheat the entire tank would prolly
cost more than the savings if I had a timer and shut it down for 15-18 hrs.
per day.

The cost of an on-demand/tankless water heater is 3 to 5 times as expensive
as a water heater with a tank. What I am curious about is the performance
of the tankless water heater. What are the pros and cons? I know they are
quite popular outside the USA- what should I look for in features and what
should I avoid? Does anybody in the USA have one? I assume what is
available here may be very different from what others may have???

Any thoughts?

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

That's a good idea. Our tankless was in the laundry room between the
bathroom and the kitchen. Ideal placement for me.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA


On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:24:20 -0500, "Leslie & The Furbabies in MO."
wrote:

Thanks Joan. If I design the house with all the bathrooms, kitchen and
laundry very close together would that eliminate much of the 'it can take a
sinkful of water(no kidding) to get it to run hot' problem???

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

"joanb" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Aug 11, 8:22 am, Patti wrote:
I have a friend who lives along and she has one of these. I'll ring her
as soon as I can and ask her what she thinks of hers. Knowing her she
won't know anything about the economics of the thing! but she'll know
whether she likes it or not. I'll let you know what she says.
.
In message , Leslie & The Furbabies
in MO. writes



I've been doing some pondering- I know very dangerous! BG

Living alone now, I realized I am paying to keep a tankful of hot water
heated for many, many hours without none to minimal usage. If I shower
7
times a week, wash 3-4 loads of laundry and run the dishwasher 3-4 times
per
week then I have a demand for hot water about 9 hours per week. I am
heating water 24/7 which is 168 hrs. per week- so I am paying for almost
160
hrs. of hot water that I do not need or use. I don't see putting a
water
heater with a tank on a timer since I need hot water during the day for
hand
washing and small jobs and the cost to reheat the entire tank would
prolly
cost more than the savings if I had a timer and shut it down for 15-18
hrs.
per day.

The cost of an on-demand/tankless water heater is 3 to 5 times as
expensive
as a water heater with a tank. What I am curious about is the
performance
of the tankless water heater. What are the pros and cons? I know they
are
quite popular outside the USA- what should I look for in features and
what
should I avoid? Does anybody in the USA have one? I assume what is
available here may be very different from what others may have???

Any thoughts?

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

--
Best Regards
pat on the hill

We have one, and the main problem is that it takes some time to "fire
up" and reach my kitchen sink. We pay for our water by the gallon,
and it can take a sinkful of water(no kidding) to get it to run hot.
Ergo, wasted water, more cost. Also if you were ever planning to use
any kind of solar heating that can prove very difficult and costly to
include in your tankless system. For central heating it can't be
beaten, but for showers, we have a point-of use electric heater with
integral pump, and that is very efficient. I threaten to have a point-
of-use heater for my kitchen; as it is, if a small quantity of hot
water is needed, I boil the kettle and use that in a small bowl. We
only wash dishes in the dishwasher.
It all helps if you have the heater very near to where it will be used
with only a short pipe run to the faucets/taps.

Hope that helps

Joan

We used propane. The electrics are fine but they must be ganged, one
right after the other, it takes three for a dishwasher.

They give a constant supply, you could run the hot water all day and
never run out.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA


On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:38:49 -0400, Tia Mary
wrote:

DH has looked into a tankless water heater for the house we will
build when he retires. He says there's a good site --
http://www.foreverho****er.com is the link he thinks -- and he has
learned a lot about them from this. His take is that it only works with
gas, not electric so if you are an all electric home, it won't be
feasible unless you add propane or natural gas.
Apparently, the water travels through a coil and THIS is what's
heated. Like a regular tank water heater, the water travels from the
coil to wherever you have opened up the faucet. If you have a two story
home and the unit is in the basement, it will take just as long for
tankless hot water to get to you as it does for regular tank hot water.
A tankless water heater DOES NOT mean instant hot water on demand. It
does cost considerably more as you have mentioned. It uses a whole lot
less power than a regular tank -- you do need a bit of electricity to
turn on the gas flame that is used to heat the water in the coil but
that's probably just a few cents worth of electricity.
DH also says they are much smaller than the standard tank and can be
tucked into a closet and not necessarily put in the basement or the
garage. It MUST be professionally installed -- I think Jack mentioned
that -- or you *will* have all sorts of problems. From what DH has
read, it should provide constant hot water throughout the entire house
depending on the capacity of your plumbing lines. You don't run out of
hot water like with a tank but if you have 3 people taking showers at
the same time the washer is going along with the dishwasher, then you'll
have a problem providing enough hot water to all of those locations. If
your water heater coil is 1" diameter then you will have more hot water
available for use by different locations in the house than if your coil
is 3/4" or 1/2".
Anyway, Dh is pretty sure we will have a tankless system when we
build the cabin. It will pay for itself in the long run and everyone in
the mountains has propane for heating so we will have the gas available.
Keep us posted on what you learn, OK Leslie? Good Luck & CiaoMeow ^;;^

PAX, Tia Mary ^;;^ (RCTQ Queen of Kitties)
Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about
their whiskers!
Visit my Photo albums at http://community.webshots.com/user/tiamary



Leslie & The Furbabies in MO. wrote:
I've been doing some pondering- I know very dangerous! BG

Living alone now, I realized I am paying to keep a tankful of hot water
heated for many, many hours without none to minimal usage. If I shower 7
times a week, wash 3-4 loads of laundry and run the dishwasher 3-4 times per
week then I have a demand for hot water about 9 hours per week. I am
heating water 24/7 which is 168 hrs. per week- so I am paying for almost 160
hrs. of hot water that I do not need or use. I don't see putting a water
heater with a tank on a timer since I need hot water during the day for hand
washing and small jobs and the cost to reheat the entire tank would prolly
cost more than the savings if I had a timer and shut it down for 15-18 hrs.
per day.

The cost of an on-demand/tankless water heater is 3 to 5 times as expensive
as a water heater with a tank. What I am curious about is the performance
of the tankless water heater. What are the pros and cons? I know they are
quite popular outside the USA- what should I look for in features and what
should I avoid? Does anybody in the USA have one? I assume what is
available here may be very different from what others may have???

Any thoughts?

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

recarlos wrote:
Can you get "Off-Peak" Electricity?
This heats your water at night when there is less demand for power and
therefore the amount you use costs less perKwt. My MIL had one and it worked
for her with four people in house and it very rarely needed reheating during
the day when she turned on the 'thermo'.
Ruth
Sydney

Solar is another good option, as the advertising here says
"Hot water free from the sun" or something similar...

My parents have solar hot water and only need electric to
to heat the water if it's been cloudy for several days in
a row. It gets the water really hot, especially in summer.

--
Melinda
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol

chris wrote:
we have one of these - called an instantaneous or continuous system here
in Australia. Ours is a 25-30 yr old Junkers (bought out by Bosch) and was
in the house when we moved in 18yrs ago. Our laundry, kitchen and bathroom
are all in line - the hot water system is in the laundry and we have very
little time lag getting hot water to the bathroom (furthest away). There
are 5 of us using it, we also have gas cooking and heating and my gas bill
is quite reasonable. There are some issues with pressure - we needed a
particular type of mixer tap when we renovated the kitchen (ordinary single
taps are not an problem) and if you turn on a tap or flush the toilet
while someone is in the shower, they lose a bit of hot water. It's something
we've learnt to work around - if you want to fill the kettle while someone's
in the shower, you do it at a trickle. If you flush, you yell "sorry" :-) I
understand that the newer electronically controlled systems don't have the
pressure problem.

When this system needs replacing, I'll certainly be replacing it with
another. We use a star rating system to measure energy efficiency for
appliances and most of these systems rate at 5+ stars (out of 6).

chris
:-)

We had an old electric instantaneous here when we moved in and I
HATED it. When it died we replaced it with a tank and will
eventually put a solar system with it.

--
Melinda
http://cust.idl.com.au/athol

we had one of these outside of the USA (we now live in the USA) intially
when we bought the house we were a little bit anxious about it, as
neither of us was familiar with them, but it worked out really well and
the absence of a tank was a bonus in a tiny house! I was concerned it
wouldn't run through hot water fast enough when you turned the shower on
or something, but it came through fine, the only slight problem was we
didn't have enough pressure to say run a bowl of water at the same time
and flushing a toilet would make the shower temporarily go cold. I'm
having memory issues and can't recall whether this was only a problem
before we got a new boiler, or whether it was a feature of this type of
boiler or a problem due to our mains water pressure - but none of this
would be an issue if you are alone! I think the chances are that in the
lifetime of such a boiler, that you may not save much, only break even
in terms of cost, but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by
directing the money in a different direction.

cheers
Anne

Anne Rogers wrote:
we had one of these outside of the USA (we now live in the USA) intially
when we bought the house we were a little bit anxious about it, as
neither of us was familiar with them, but it worked out really well and
the absence of a tank was a bonus in a tiny house! I was concerned it
wouldn't run through hot water fast enough when you turned the shower on
or something, but it came through fine, the only slight problem was we
didn't have enough pressure to say run a bowl of water at the same time
and flushing a toilet would make the shower temporarily go cold. I'm
having memory issues and can't recall whether this was only a problem
before we got a new boiler, or whether it was a feature of this type of
boiler or a problem due to our mains water pressure - but none of this
would be an issue if you are alone! I think the chances are that in the
lifetime of such a boiler, that you may not save much, only break even
in terms of cost, but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by
directing the money in a different direction.

cheers
Anne

The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes 24 years
to recoup the cost.

--
Sally at the Seaside~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~uk
http://community.webshots.com/user/sallyswin

I think the chances are that in the lifetime of such a boiler,
that you may not save much, only break even in terms of cost,
but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by directing
the money in a different direction.
The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes
24 years to recoup the cost.

That may be true in the UK, but every city roofscape in southern
Turkey is a forest of solar heating systems. They wouldn't have
sold hundreds of thousands of them in a relatively poor country
if they weren't cost-effective quickly.

Probably there's not much difference in level of affluence between
the average Turkish working-class apartment dweller and the average
occupant of a US trailer park, except that the American is more
likely to have a car. If Americans paid a realistic price for their
oil, trailer parks would sprout solar heating units overnight.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

The world oil market offers it cheaper to the US?

We are having wind generators pop up a lot here in
my area these days. It is really windy here and
you might say they are taking off.
More than a few with solar but those houses are
usually built to be more passive
to make it cost effective.
Back in the Jimmy Carter days there were tax breaks
for solar water set ups. Folks financed them when
they purchased houses. They were not efficient and
I wonder if anyone even broke even on them.


Most of the folks in the kind of trailer parks
you seem to be referring to don't much work so
comparing them to working class might
not be a good choice.

Taria



Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
I think the chances are that in the lifetime of such a boiler,
that you may not save much, only break even in terms of cost,
but you'd be doing a good thing for the environment by directing
the money in a different direction.

The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes
24 years to recoup the cost.


That may be true in the UK, but every city roofscape in southern
Turkey is a forest of solar heating systems. They wouldn't have
sold hundreds of thousands of them in a relatively poor country
if they weren't cost-effective quickly.

Probably there's not much difference in level of affluence between
the average Turkish working-class apartment dweller and the average
occupant of a US trailer park, except that the American is more
likely to have a car. If Americans paid a realistic price for their
oil, trailer parks would sprout solar heating units overnight.

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

The same applies to solar water heating - apparently it takes 24 years
to recoup the cost.

Down to about 10-12 years in our part of Oregon, now... that will drop
as energy prices continue to rise.

Kay