Has anybody gone tankless for their water heater?

[kdonnel]

I am finishing my basement and the water heater is 14 years old. I don’t like the idea of an old 50 gallon tank next to my newly finished floor.

Since our house will soon be two households I have been researching tankless. Tankless seems the only way to support the potential for multiple showers, clothes washers, and dish washers going at once.

Anyone have any experience with tankless?

 

[stewart715]

We had a combination boiler/tankless heater installed about 18 months ago. They require some maintenance (periodic flushing) and you must have a water softener and ideally a filter to protect the equipment. But they are awesome. They can handle a lot but some chose to put a tiny supplemental electric tank heater near it as a buffer because when used a lot it can fluctuate water temperature a bit. But for most part, 2 showers, washer, dish washer has been no issue. We don't have a buffer tank and it's fine.

My favorite feature is some let you quickly adjust the temperature with an iPhone app so for kids baths you can just set it to 100 degrees even and fill the tub on max without having to feel the temp.

 

[DLgal]

Our home (built in 2015) has a tankless heater and I LOVE IT. Our utility bill is much lower due to not needing to heat a huge tank at all times, and you ABSOLUTELY CAN have 2 people showering, the washing machine, and dishwasher going all at once. We do the simultaneous showers almost every night. The only thing I've noticed is a slight reduction in water pressure when doing multiple things at once, but no issues with the temperature of the water. Ours does not have a water softener or any sort of filtration added. It is zero maintenance, and the system is installed in our garage. It has a digital interface where you can easily change the water temperature. It is quite quiet, although it does make some noise when you turn on a hot water faucet. It's kind of a low hum/whirring noise like a fan.

 

[Praying Colonel]

I am finishing my basement and the water heater is 14 years old. I don’t like the idea of an old 50 gallon tank next to my newly finished floor.

Since our house will soon be two households I have been researching tankless. Tankless seems the only way to support the potential for multiple showers, clothes washers, and dish washers going at once.

Anyone have any experience with tankless?

We have a tankless heater in our house. It was already installed when we moved in about 10 years ago. I think it's about 13 years old.

It's worked great until this past week. Now it's "hot water roulette"--you might get hot water, you might not, you might have to play with it a while before it comes on. The plumber came out and did some things which didn't quite fix it, but he's coming back with the part he needs to finish the job. He said lime and scaling will build up in them and they should be maintenanced periodically to ensure they keep working OK.

In spite of our recent issue I really like it.

 

[Floridaman999]

Yes

 

[mjkacmom]

Family of 7 on our second, shower after shower, dishwasher, washing machine- never once ran out of hot water.

 

[kdonnel]

Got the first quote. The neighbor was having to get a new main water line so I asked the plumber while he was here if I could get a quote.

Wow.

$2355 for a traditional 50 gal water heater
and
$4300 for a Navien 240a.

I won't be using them.

 

[AuntieMe3]

My parents have one and its great. We're considering getting one for our house. We just have to remember to reset it if the power goes out.

 

[mom2rb]

Got the first quote. The neighbor was having to get a new main water line so I asked the plumber while he was here if I could get a quote.

Wow.

$2355 for a traditional 50 gal water heater
and
$4300 for a Navien 240a.

I won't be using them.

I had my 50 gallon tank replaced today. It was $1050. I have 2 water heaters and only plan on living in this house for a few more years. It isn’t worth it to go tankless right now. My next house will definitely have one.

 

[soccerdad72]

Yes, love it. Saved a ton of money on installation costs (e.g. it was free) - my dad's a plumber

 

[kdonnel]

I had my 50 gallon tank replaced today. It was $1050. I have 2 water heaters and only plan on living in this house for a few more years. It isn’t worth it to go tankless right now. My next house will definitely have one.

$1100 was what I expected for a traditional tank and $2500 for tankless.

I will be shopping around.

 

[AgentMama]

That plumber sounds extraordinarily high, although I'm not sure what area you're in.

We have tankless and love it. I have no idea if/how we maintain it, but I'm assuming we don't. Like other posters have said above, we often have multiple people showering and other things going and haven't had an issue with running out of water.

 

[minniecarousel]

We went tankless & put a water recirculator in the master bathroom - it was the farthest point from the tankless unit. Instant hot water. That was in our last house. We thought it would be a great selling point. Nope, no difference with buyers. When we needed to replace the water heater in our current house, we went conventional. With just the two of us here, it didn’t make sense to spend the money on it.

 

[DLgal]

My parents have one and its great. We're considering getting one for our house. We just have to remember to reset it if the power goes out.

Huh? We have never had to reset ours after a power outage. We have literally never touched it in 4 years.

 

[sjberg79]

We have one, it was in our house when we bought it 4 years ago but the house is 8 years old so I think it's that old. Ours just had a problem this week we needed a plumber for but it was an easy fix, one of the sensors inside had apparently gotten dusty and it was making it not make hot water reliably. He gave it a good cleaning and it's back to all the hot water we need. You are supposed to get your tankless hot water "flushed" professionally annually, or at least if you live in an area with hard water. They hook a machine up to it and run something through it to get rid of the deposits that may have gotten stuck. But I really do love tankless and if we bought a house without it, I would pay for it to have it again.

I also have never heard of needing to reset it after a power outage. Have never done that, never needed to.

 

[Lehuaann]

Got the first quote. The neighbor was having to get a new main water line so I asked the plumber while he was here if I could get a quote.

Wow.

$2355 for a traditional 50 gal water heater
and
$4300 for a Navien 240a.

I won't be using them.

That’s high. We just paid around $1300 for a 50 gallon installed. The tankless was just too high $4000+, plus they had to cut a hole into the wall. Our old water heater lasted 30 years, way past expectancy. So we’ll see how long this one lasts.

 

[AustinMommyofThree]

We looked into it when building our home, but with the design of our house we needed two 50-gallon hot water heaters anyways, so running out of hot water wasn't an issue. We have recirculators on both, giving us instant hot water at all the taps. Now those were a great investment!

 

[gary1955]

you may have already checked this out, but I did not see it mentioned. tankless water heaters have a higher gas or electric demand. if your existing service isn't adequate upgrading will be an additional cost.

 

[LCoulter]

We had a tankless water heater installed about 6 months ago and I LOVE it! For the first time in 16 years since we built this house, I was able to fill the tub to the top with hot water!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

We have friends who absolutely love theirs. I also know somebody I used to work with and she loved it. We had one in a condo we stayed in, and it worked very well. We had a total of 5 people and 3 bathrooms, did not have any hot water shortages. So that was a nice thing for sure. I have absolutely no idea whether or not it runs up utility bills or not.