On Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 9:11:18 PM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On 5/9/17 2:26 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 9 May 2017 11:09:52 -0700 (PDT), ItsJoanNotJoann
wrote:
On Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 12:48:53 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
I have and the financials remain the same, awful. Between the
high cost of the unit and the likelihood that a new gas line to
support it will need to be run, it takes decades to break even,
assuming it lasts that long.
I'm curious about these but why would a new gas line need to be run
if there is an existing one there?
Because they use from 4 to 10 times as much gas when they are
running. A lot of homes even need the meter and the line from the
street changed to support a gas tankless heater.

I have a Rinnai RV 53. It's working on the previous heater's
1/2" line. The water heater is maybe 25' from the gas meter. I don't
use more than one thing at a time that requires hot water though.

That's a key difference. The OP is talking about replacing a tank type that
currently supplies the whole house and typically people expect to
be able to be drawing hot water from several sources at the same time.