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

I got to thinking. Since the only time you seem to have a problem is
when you have company from out of town, it may be better to have put the
electric first so most of the time you can have it turned off and you will
not use any electricity and will not have any standby losses (heat loss from
the tank). Then when expecting company you can crank up the electric unit.
You might even set it up to heat just a little to temper the water rather
than heat it so the gas unit can do the real work.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit