On Fri, 06 May 2005 16:59:15 -0600, someone wrote:

The bottom line is that except for a few specific circumstances, storage tank
heaters are cheaper to install and operate over a given period of time than
tankless.

And that makes a LOT of sense in general principle. To get tankless
to work, you are installing a HUGE capacity heater, that will only run
for minutes a day. Waster capacity. And then it is way oversized for
low flow situations.

OTOH, using a tank, you run a much smaller heating element, just for
longer periods. And you store the warmed water. The relevant balance
would be between the cost of the storage loss, and the cost of the
huge capacity heater unit. In "normal" use where hot water is used at
various times of each day, apparently a storage tank does pretty well.

BTW, in Europe, often energy costs are higher due to tax structure,
and people are apparently willing to put up with more (living with the
limitations of a tankless unit's performance characteritics) for
economy. Hey, in Europe, manual transmission in cars are much more
common. In the US we tend to have relatively luxurious housing, even
of our total incomes are no longer the envy of the world.


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