Running On Empty

When we were renting our house, we had a regular old 40 gallon tank water heater. I’m honestly not sure how old it was at the time. But it drove me nuts, because apparently, I like to take absurdly hot showers. Seth says it’s like I’m trying to burn myself alive. Needless to say, our little old water heater could not sustain that temperature of hot water for longer than about 15 minutes, which is not even remotely long enough to enjoy a proper hot shower (and forget trying to shave your legs). And if someone had run the dishwasher or the washing machine within the hour before my shower? I might as well just not take one.

Obviously this was a problem. We had four people living in the house at one point. Good luck trying to take even a lukewarm shower if you’re not the first one to the bathroom! And god forbid you try to do laundry if someone needs a shower. I tried to remedy this by turning up the temperature of the heater, figuring we’d use less of the hot water to achieve the same results. I kept the dial well within the range that was marked “safe,” but our water heater spewed boiling hot water from the safety release valve anyway. So much for that idea.

After that, I got to work trying to figure out how to remedy this issue, especially since we were talking about buying the house from Seth’s parents (which obviously we ended up doing). I looked into getting a larger or newer (and thus hopefully better functioning) water heater, but what I kept coming back to was the tankless water heaters. The promise of unlimited hot water AND energy savings was something I simply could not ignore. So for those of you who are unfamiliar, here’s the deal with tankless water heaters.

A tankless water heater runs on gas just like one with a tank. A regular water heater keeps a tank full of hot water at the ready in case you need it. This wastes a lot of energy as the same water cools down and then is repeatedly heated throughout the day without being used. A tankless water heater only turns on when you need hot water, and then runs cold water over hot coils in order to deliver a steady stream of hot water to your faucet. And the best part, of course, is that the tankless heater continually produces hot water for as long as you keep the hot tap turned on! Hallelujah!

One thing people don’t understand about tankless water heaters is that “unlimited” does not equal “instant.” When you turn on the hot water, the water heater turns on, but it takes a few seconds to fire up and then a few more for the hot water to actually travel through the pipes to get to your faucet of choice. That said, I don’t think it takes any longer to reach our faucets than the water from our old water heater did, and I’ll happily wait a few seconds for an unlimited stream of steamy goodness!

Now, we had our tankless water heater professionally installed because Seth was unfamiliar with and therefore uncomfortable about messing around with gas lines, which is fair since we don’t really want to blow up our house. In our area, a start to finish standard install for a tankless water heater will run you about $3500-4000, including the heater itself. It’s pricey, but has been worth every penny in our humble opinion. Our unit is a high efficiency Noritz, but we also considered a Rheem and probably would have been happy with either. However, Seth said if he had to do it over, he’d probably install it himself since, once he saw how simple it was, he was sure he could have done it just fine on his own. A tankless unit itself would have cost us about $1200-1500 plus a few extra bucks for PVC and copper pipe. Keep in mind though that Seth is fairly handy. There is no way I could install one myself.

There are a few things to consider before going whole hog and buying a tankless heater. They produce a lot more exhaust than a normal water heater. As such, they have to be vented outside separately. They also require a good deal of air intake. This is a separate pipe which may or may not need to be open to the outside, depending on the size of the room your water heater is going to live in. If you want a tankless water heater, you need to be sure your unit can be effectively vented to the exterior of your house. Depending on the new water heater you purchase and the old one you replace, you may need to increase the size of the gas line that runs to your heater as well. The tankless water heater also needs to be mounted to a wall. This is nice because it saves space compared to a traditional water heater, but not so nice if your old water heater was located somewhere that makes a wall mount difficult. Your tankless water heater also needs to be plugged in, so make sure you have a standard outlet nearby. And if you are a brave soul who is going to try installing yours on your own, make sure you read the manual that comes with your unit and follow the instructions to the letter.

Lastly, keep in mind that you should pull a permit to replace your water heater. This is probably an especially good idea if you install it yourself, as the inspector will be able to tell you if you did something wrong (thus keeping you from potentially blowing yourself up). 

Anybody out there recently switch to tankless? Or choose to stick with a traditional water heater, tank and all? Tell us about your experience and why you went the route you did!