Insta-Hot??

[LarryFine]

You made money doing what the customer wanted and/or needed. Is that a bad thing?

 

[kwired]

And makes up for that during cooling season.

If you live in a northern state you probably have a longer heating season than cooling season. This will have some effect of the true ROI of installing the instant water heater gas or electric.

I have a geothermal heat pump in my home and it also has de-superheat circuit for hot water heating. I don't have numbers to back it up but I'm willing to bet my hot water cost less than the instant water heaters during cooling season, for the same amount of water used during same time periods.

 

[eric7379]

How long is your estimated return on investment?

Remember that heat lost from a tank style heater during heating season is not lost entirely, it puts that much less load on your heating system.

For me, I did not care what the ROI was. I never ran the numbers. The house that my fiance and I bought was a foreclosure and we did a 203K. When we got the house, there was no furnace, no hot water heater, no central AC, no plumbing. The house was stripped. Everything had to be redone. Re-wired, re-plumbed the whole house and in the process of doing so, we went with the most energy efficient products that we could without breaking the bank.

The total cost of the tankless water heater, pluse installation was right around $1700 (I had to have a larger gas line ran as part of it). Could I have installed a traditional tank-type water heater and spent less money? Yes. Did I want to? Nope, and I don't have any regrets about it, either.

 

[hurk27]

If you live in a northern state you probably have a longer heating season than cooling season. This will have some effect of the true ROI of installing the instant water heater gas or electric.

I have a geothermal heat pump in my home and it also has de-superheat circuit for hot water heating. I don't have numbers to back it up but I'm willing to bet my hot water cost less than the instant water heaters during cooling season, for the same amount of water used during same time periods.

I have had tank water heaters and will have one in this new house as soon as work picks up, the last place I had changing to a gas fired tank less, from a 40 gal tank dropped almost $150 off my gas bill a month, but it was only me living there so it didn't fire all that much, I could see a point where with higher hot water usage, it would not be a cost efficient method because of the large amount of gas it uses, so maybe a large family who does allot of laundry and baths will not see as big of return as I did.

Here electric is out of the question, our KWH rate is one of the highest in the nation, I think its about .16 cents a KWH so we don't see very large demands on a house, even though we install 200 amp services in most new houses, very rarely do we see a calculated load above 40-60 amps. if you do you will see a $700-$900 electric bills

 

[kwired]

...the last place I had changing to a gas fired tank less, from a 40 gal tank dropped almost $150 off my gas bill a month, but it was only me living there so it didn't fire all that much

Sounds like an inefficient water heater in the first place - probably losing more heat out the exhaust than you are losing from the tank while sitting idle. If it has a standing pilot that alone may cost you $10 per month in gas.

 

[hurk27]

Sounds like an inefficient water heater in the first place - probably losing more heat out the exhaust than you are losing from the tank while sitting idle. If it has a standing pilot that alone may cost you $10 per month in gas.

yep it had standing pilot, but then again as I said, with just me there, it only fired when I got home from work, and when I did laundry, which was about once a month, back then I could afford allot of clothes to get me through a month:grin: