"Tony Hwang" wrote in message
news:OfhCf.453788$ki.271597@pd7tw2no...
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

I agree, I suspect that the 3800 watt, single element, el-cheapo electric
water heater recovers pretty slow. Compared to the 30K BTU NG heater...
another reason I put them in series.
Craig