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Wayne Whitney

On 2008-03-19, wrote:

on a tankless feeding a regular tank, it should cost no more to
operate than a regular hot water tank. the tankless initially heats
the water to whatever it can, then sends the water to a regular tank
that does its normal job.

A much better way to do this is to get an electric tank water heater,
remove the heating elements, and wire the thermostat to run a pump on
a loop to the tankless heater. Incoming cold and outgoing hot are
from the tank iteslf.

This way, the standby losses are that of an electric tank, which is
less than a gas tank due to the lack of a flue down the middle. An
advantage over tankless only is that the delivered hot water pressure
is higher, because the pressure drop from a tank is noticeably less
than from a tankless.

When I get around to installing solar hot water, this is probably the
way I'm going to go; the solar can be on another loop from the tank.

Cheers, Wayne