On Jul 12, 11:07?am, "Marilyn & Bob" wrote:
The only problem with your proposed setup is that you always have to have
the electric heater on, if for example the kids are away and the 50 gallon
gas is sufficient. Perhaps a tricier setup which allows you to manually
bypass the electric would make more sense. Or even trickier one that allows
you to bypass either WH. That way if the gas heater failed, you would could
still have hot water while you were getting a replacement.
--
Peace,
BobJ

wrote in message

ps.com...



On Jul 11, 11:52?pm, Alex wrote:
Wow - thanks for all of the replies!

I went and checked some of the things you all mentioned... here is some
more info.

Four people in the house - one big whirlpool tub, one regular tub/shower,
and one freestanding shower stall.

When the big tub is used, we usually run out of hot during the 2nd or 3rd
shower at or near the same time as the whirlpool was used.

We've pretty much have had this issue the whole time, but the kids were
young back then... now that they're getting older, it's longer
showers/baths & it's also harder to schedule their bathing time in order
to spread out the usage.

I checked the hot water tank... looks like it's plumbed correctly - the
inputs at the top are labelled hot/cold & the piping seems right.

I flushed it for sediment just a couple of years ago when I needed to
replace the controller board or some such thing... it was originally
installed in 99, so it's ~8 years old.

The model is Rheem "21VP50E - 1 A". It's a 50g gas model with this info
on the label:

input btuh 40,000
Manifold 4.0
Cap 1st hour 72g

Do you think it's undersized for the load we have with the whirlpool tub?

I was leaning towards the extra electric tank since I can do that for a
couple hundred $$$... I think a tankless that can handle what we need
would be a grand or two, no?

Thanks again!

you way undersized because of that whirpool tub.

electric sounds great till you look into energy costs. why not a
second gas direct vent in series? preferably as high BTU as possible.
you may have trouble finding more than 40K BTU as direct vent.

electric will help a lot but its recovery will only be 1/2 of a
similiar sized gas tank. so go large on electric.

how many amps is your main breaker and do you have space for a 2 pole
breaker?

again install costs will be less but operating costs will wipe out the
install savings fast.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

i would go electric first, then gas athough 2 gas tanks will cost way
less to operate.

electric tank last is a bad idea, energy cost wise.

ideally install a tankless gas direct vent on a outside wall, then
feed that water threu a well insulated line to the standard gas tank.

this should add very little to operating costs since the water must be
heated anyway and the only losses from the tankless are standby in
hopefully well insulated line.......

will need new large gas line but with a nice large tankless you will
have nearly unlimited hot water.