On Jul 16, 10:00 am, " wrote:
On Jul 16, 9:54?am, "The Streets"
wrote:





wrote in message

oups.com...

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

oups.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.

I'd do just the opposite -- cold water into the gas heater first. That way
most
of the heating is done with the (usually) cheaper gas and the (usually) more
expensive electricity just has to make up any stand-by losses.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

electric tank will be making up al standby losses- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, it will be making up the standby losses, but if you put it first,
it doesn't stop losing heat, does it? It stll has the same loss plus
it now has to heat the incoming cold water, which could be 40 deg in
winter, and bring it up to full temp.

His idea of a second water heaer in series AFTER the existing gas is
not bad. If I could, I'd probably set it up so the electric after the
gas only served the bath with the whirlpool tub. Most new houses
with these around here have two water heaters for exactly that
reason. Whether to go with a gas vs electric for the second one
depends on energy costs vs install costs/headaches.

But best idea of all may be to go with a new single 75 gal. I think
he said existing was about 8 years old, so it's proably 2/3 the way
thru it's typical life. Or for applications like this, tankless could
be a good option.