Craig Robison wrote:
I have a perfectly good 40 gallon Natural Gas water heater (in the attic) it
sometimes proved to be insufficient with company in town so I did what you
should not do and cranked up the temp to about 145-150 and it seemed to help
although we still ran out during times of heavy use. Now we have a kid on
the way, water is SCALDING HOT and we are going to need more of it anyway.
Long story short I found that it was cheaper to add a second 40 gallon water
heater (plenty of room) than to replace the existing one (I hated the idea
of removing a good water heater, it is only 5 years old). Also, I went
electric instead of gas, mostly because I did not want to cut a hole in the
roof for the vent AND the electric model was cheaper AND I just happened to
have a no-longer-used 10 gauge wire running right to it. Natural gas prices
are sky-rocketing but I still think that a gas water heater is cheaper to
operate than an electric model SO, I plumbed them in series rather than
parallel. That is to say the hot water leaves the gas water heater and goes
into the electric water heater then into the house. In this manner I figure
that the gas heater is still doing most of the heating and the electric one
is more like a storage tank. I have set them both to 125 degrees, the
minimum temperature that the dishwasher manual recommends (to do this I
filled a bucket full from the T&P valve and took the temp right there). My
question, is there anything wrong with having the water flow from one to the
other in this manner? I cannot see why the electric water heater cares what
temperature the inlet water is. For what it is worth the guy at Home Depot
thought it was brilliant, but he aint a plumber, and neither am I...
Any Thoughts?

Craig


Hi,
I always had two gas heater in series. But have no experience with
gas-electric combo. I'd think they'll have different recovery rate.
Tony