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Anyone have an experience with tankless water heaters?

I'm late to this party and it looks like it got a little side tracked... :)

We remodeled a house 5 years ago and it already had an older model tank less water heater. It worked so we kept it. It was smaller (I want to say it was 3-4gpm) but it ran everything in our small house and we never had any issues other than it wasn't a good idea to run 2 showers at the same time or take a shower at the same time the dishwasher was running, but we can't do that in our current house that has a regular water heater.

I miss the tankless!
 
So far so good with the tankless water heater. I figure I'll hardly think about the switch a couple weeks from now.

I do think it makes getting hot water to the places that already took a long time significantly longer. Hard to say how much longer or if it's mostly in my head since I didn't time it with the old hot water heater.

But I haven't had any performance issues with it. It is doing at least as much as our 40 gallon tank heater ever did.
 
So I've been running the tankless water heater for more than a month now. It's pretty awesome. I have one of the lowest BTU units out there at 160,000btus and it runs circles around my old 40G tank heater.

I mentioned earlier about being able to turn the temp up and down, but I haven't really done that, not much, anyway. I have gradually worked the temp up to 130F after starting at 120F. There are times when I want my hot water to be pretty hot.

The biggest advantage I've found so far is for cleaning my brewing equipment. My brewery consists of two 20G kettles and a 15G kettle, so a total of 55G. I was doing a deep clean on them the other day and I bumped the water temp up to 140F and was able to fill and soak, drain, rinse, rinse, rinse. I probably used over 100G of hot water and I never had to stop and wait or do what I've done in the past which is to use my brew system to heat the water. This was much easier. I did finish by heating the water to 180 and circulating it for an hour to sanitize everything. But other than that I used endless hot water for cleaning and rinsing. It was bad ***.

I also have 2 60L fermentors and a bunch of 5G kegs and it's awesome for cleaning that stuff out as well.

There are only three people in my household, so we're not usually fighting for the hot water, but if you had a 5 person household or larger I think a tankless water heater could change your life. You'd probably want a beefier 180,000-200,000btu unit, but with that you could run 2-3 showers at a time non-stop.
 
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Thanks for updating this post by the way. You've pretty much sold me on this as a future home upgrade.
 
Oh, I forgot one of the biggest benefits. Just got my gas bill that reflects one full month of use and it is 33% lower than my gas bill from the same period last year. Maybe the weather had a lot to do with that, but I'll be watching my average over the course of the year to see how much lower it is.
 
Gameface said:
So I've been running the tankless water heater for more than a month now. It's pretty awesome. I have one of the lowest BTU units out there at 160,000btus and it runs circles around my old 40G tank heater.

I mentioned earlier about being able to turn the temp up and down, but I haven't really done that, not much, anyway. I have gradually worked the temp up to 130F after starting at 120F. There are times when I want my hot water to be pretty hot.

The biggest advantage I've found so far is for cleaning my brewing equipment. My brewery consists of two 20G kettles and a 15G kettle, so a total of 55G. I was doing a deep clean on them the other day and I bumped the water temp up to 140F and was able to fill and soak, drain, rinse, rinse, rinse. I probably used over 100G of hot water and I never had to stop and wait or do what I've done in the past which is to use my brew system to heat the water. This was much easier. I did finish by heating the water to 180 and circulating it for an hour to sanitize everything. But other than that I used endless hot water for cleaning and rinsing. It was bad ***.

I also have 2 60L fermentors and a bunch of 5G kegs and it's awesome for cleaning that stuff out as well.

There are only three people in my household, so we're not usually fighting for the hot water, but if you had a 5 person household or larger I think a tankless water heater could change your life. You'd probably want a beefier 180,000-200,000btu unit, but with that you could run 2-3 showers at a time non-stop.
Click to expand...

Sounds bad ***.

Random side story:

I have a tendency to make a ghetto hot tub a few times each summer. It's a PITA to get the thing up to temp from the faucet plus boiling large vats of water. Doing all the work is oddly half the pleasure, but using a tankless instead of taking 2 or more hours would be nice from time to time.
 
I was literally wondering about this today. Like I was going to dig this thread up just to ask you about it.

This pretty much seals the deal about whether or not to get one when I buy my next waste heater.
 
Gameface said:
So I've been running the tankless water heater for more than a month now. It's pretty awesome. I have one of the lowest BTU units out there at 160,000btus and it runs circles around my old 40G tank heater.

I mentioned earlier about being able to turn the temp up and down, but I haven't really done that, not much, anyway. I have gradually worked the temp up to 130F after starting at 120F. There are times when I want my hot water to be pretty hot.

The biggest advantage I've found so far is for cleaning my brewing equipment. My brewery consists of two 20G kettles and a 15G kettle, so a total of 55G. I was doing a deep clean on them the other day and I bumped the water temp up to 140F and was able to fill and soak, drain, rinse, rinse, rinse. I probably used over 100G of hot water and I never had to stop and wait or do what I've done in the past which is to use my brew system to heat the water. This was much easier. I did finish by heating the water to 180 and circulating it for an hour to sanitize everything. But other than that I used endless hot water for cleaning and rinsing. It was bad ***.

I also have 2 60L fermentors and a bunch of 5G kegs and it's awesome for cleaning that stuff out as well.

There are only three people in my household, so we're not usually fighting for the hot water, but if you had a 5 person household or larger I think a tankless water heater could change your life. You'd probably want a beefier 180,000-200,000btu unit, but with that you could run 2-3 showers at a time non-stop.
Click to expand...

I'm interested in what your first full cycle bill will be. Please post the figure once you get the bill if you don't mind.
 
Cunning Linguist said:
I'm interested in what your first full cycle bill will be. Please post the figure once you get the bill if you don't mind.
Click to expand...

You mean full cycle as in one year of use?

Something that might throw this off is that I've started making bone broth pretty regularly and I'm simmering a very full 5g stock pot for about 36 hours when I do that. I imagine it uses quite a bit of gas to do that. I wasn't doing that last year.

Although, I'm considering modifying a 15G aluminium kettle that I don't currently use so that I can run it off my brewery control panel using an electric heating element.

Fun side note. My wife and I have our own bank accounts and there are bills I pay and bills she pays. She pays the gas and electric bills, and I do a lot that uses a ton of gas and electricity. But I try to make up for it by doing things like buying and installing a tankless water heater, or converting all our lights to LED, out of my own pocket.

Side note to the side note, I love that we have separated our money. Best thing to happen in our marriage in the last 10 years.
 
Gameface said:
You mean full cycle as in one year of use?

Something that might throw this off is that I've started making bone broth pretty regularly and I'm simmering a very full 5g stock pot for about 36 hours when I do that. I imagine it uses quite a bit of gas to do that. I wasn't doing that last year.

Although, I'm considering modifying a 15G aluminium kettle that I don't currently use so that I can run it off my brewery control panel using an electric heating element.

Fun side note. My wife and I have our own bank accounts and there are bills I pay and bills she pays. She pays the gas and electric bills, and I do a lot that uses a ton of gas and electricity. But I try to make up for it by doing things like buying and installing a tankless water heater, or converting all our lights to LED, out of my own pocket.

Side note to the side note, I love that we have separated our money. Best thing to happen in our marriage in the last 10 years.
Click to expand...

No, your first full month. You've used it for a month but I assumed that didn't perfectly coincide with your first full billing cycle.
 
I'll have to check. My wife pays the gas bill.
 
I haven't paid attention to my gas bill (my wife pays that one) but just want to update that I'm getting close to two years with the tankless and I have no complaints. Highly recommend!
 
My dad put one in his cabin out by Duchesne. He is on well water and it is very mineral rich. There is small impeller in the heater that even with regular flushing calcifies and stops working. He has to replace it every couple of years.
 
Scat said:
My dad put one in his cabin out by Duchesne. He is on well water and it is very mineral rich. There is small impeller in the heater that even with regular flushing calcifies and stops working. He has to replace it every couple of years.
Click to expand...
Has he tried something like this

71qj2kOD4GL._SL1500_.jpg

It helps reduce the calcium deposits. I've been using one and haven't yet flushed my system. When I do flush I plan on using one of the pumps I have for brewing and doing straight vinegar for an hour or two.
 
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