HeatMan wrote:
I'm gonna start something....

wrote in message
ups.com...

Marilyn & Bob wrote:
Actually, you have a third alternative. Buy the 40 gallon gas water
heater,
but don't bypass your tankless. Feed the gas heater with the output of
the
tankless. This will significantly cut down on the gas cost for the
water
heater during the heating season, yet allow you to turn off the boiler
in
the summer.
--
Peace,
BobJ


dont bother with a tankless, they cost way too much to buy.

They _do_ cost a bit, but let's look at the real costs.

A customer wanted a new gas WH. I gave her a price of $700.00. She also
got a price for a heavily advertised brand of tankless WH of $3,500.00 I
don't know the life expectancy of a tankless, but a tank type WH has an
average life of 12-15 years. Without looking at the cost of gas and
assuming a life of the tank WH's at 12 years, she could buy roughly 5 tank
type WH's spanning 60 years.

Gas is the other thing in this equation. The tankless WH's have a minimum
flow of about 3/4 GPM to make it come on. That's actually a pretty good
flow and if your house has the galvanized pipes that are old and clogging
up, you could be on the borderline of minimum flow. The gas valves are
modulating for (I think) 20K BTU's to 199K btu's depending on the flow and
the tank type (Standard 40 or 50 gallon WH) is close to 40K all the time.
Run at full blast, the tankless has a consumption of 40K BTU/hr and the
tankless has 199K BTU/hr.

I mentioned life expectancy of the unit earlier. I have no clue how long
the tankless will last, but I do know that they have a lot of moving parts
and I'm sure these parts ain't cheap to get and install. In 25 years in
this industry, I've never replaced anything on a tank type except for T&P
valves and thermocouples. IMO, the thermostat design has been around so
long that they are nearly bulletproof.

Just some thoughts.....

Tankless sound great till you run the numbers

A close cousin is the toyota prius, it costs so much more than a
regular vehicle the payback for gas saved exceeds the life expectancy
of the vehicle, espically when considering battery bank replacement
$$$

both of these products were poroduced by marketing companies to
maximise profits

I am all for saving energy but big business just looks at bucks of
profits