Tankless water heater installed

Back in April of this year we had a solar hot water heater installed. It's 100% passive, and I love it. But if we have a day with no sun (or several guests in the house) there's not enough hot water. We'd considered that this might be the case, and so had factored in the cost of a tankless gas-fired water heater as a supplemental system when we first decided to get rid of the original hot water tank. Fortunately for us, the local gas company (TECO Peoples Gas) has a program that allows customers to purchase a tankless water heater - installed - for US$25/month for 5 years. So it's a total of $1,500 (a little high), but the monthly payment gets included in the regular gas bill. So it's painless. I called ExpertGasPlumbers and booked it.

Here's the inside of the garage where the old tank used to be. If you click on the image and view it enlarged, you'll see the comments pointing out the piping from the rooftop solar water heating system.

And here's outside where the tankless unit gets mounted. Because we're in a warmer climate, it works well to locate the heater outside, and there's no special venting needed. It does use a little electricity for the thermostat and the ignition (there's no pilot light).

Things don't look much different on the inside with the installation all done. There is a small thermostat control, and a little extra piping. I went out to check during the installation and noticed that the guys had originally routed the pipes in a manner that would have bypassed the solar heater completely. D'OH! So I showed where things needed to be connected and they were extremely nice about it and rerouted things as needed. Whew! That could have been a fiasco!

Things look quite different on the outside, of course. Our new Rinnai R70 unit is up and running. When I first turned on the hot water inside, the new unit fired up ...once the hot water from the solar unit had flowed down, the gas-fired unit detected the water temp and shut itself off, letting the solar-heated water just flow on through. Perfect :)

Comments

[Scott Gentzen]

This is good stuff. I don't get enough direct sunlight to manage a passive water heater (probably too far north too) but I've been looking into a tankless system when I end up replacing my water heater. I'm glad to hear that it's working out for you. Will have to check in with my gas company to see if they're doing anything similar.

[Barry in Portland]

very nice