Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
Ok, all this talk of my hot water tank being pushed past what is reasonable has me looking at tankless options because I can't fit anything bigger than the 40gal currently down there, and my kids will be teenagers during the life of the next one.
I've hard Rinnai and Navien are great. I like the "Comfort Flow" feature of the Navien so that doing dishes by hand and turning the hot water on and off a lot isn't an exercise in frustration.
Anyone have any advice/experience? Have an installer you'd recommend?
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I got a Navien 180A. The A has a small storage tank and recirc. It's about $700 more than the S model without. I've liked it so far, it takes less than 5 seconds to get hot water to the kitchen sink, which is about 15 feet of pipe. The shower takes about 15 seconds, probably close to 40 feet of pipe.It's in a new location, so I can't do a direct comparison to the old tank.
One thing to watch out for is the flow rate. Take a look at the chart in the bottom left of page 3:
https://acornheat.com/wp-content/upl...-1907-FLIP.pdf
This unit is rated at 4.3 GPM, which is about true for a temperature rise of 70°F. But in the winter, our water is closer to 40°F, which means to get to 125°F you need a rise of 85°F. This reduces it to 3.5GPM. Still fine for one person to shower. I do find if you have the dishwasher or laundry running flow drops a bit. For 2 of us it doesn't matter at all. Still totally happy with it. But if you have more people or that would bug you, you'd want a bigger unit.
I used Benner, and they were great, though I suspect not the cheapest. I did have to have a gas line moved and some plumbing changed, as well as concrete coring and a drain pump, so it came to 7K. Not great, but they are supposed to have longer lives than tanks, and now I am setup I could install a replacement myself(probably minus the gas hookup, not sure on permits for that).