Anyone here have a tankless water heater?

[NetGuySC]

Hi,

I am trying to make my house as energy effecient as poissible. I currently own a 80 gallon water heater (will be getting timer soon) with a temp setting of 110 F.

Was wondering if a tankless water heater would use less energy and was wishing that someone here has some experience with one.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[abracadabra1]

holy sh!t. i was interested in the same thing.
any ideas where i can get one?
mine just busted a huge leak and i'm taking freezing showers.
thx!

 

[IBhacknU]

what is a tankless water heater?

 

[Zucchini]

I've used one in hongkong, pretty neat Its probably more efficient .. sorry i don't have much more info then that

 

[OS]

Most water heaters are this giant tank of water, where the water inside is always kept at a certain temperature. It's usually that giant vertical round tank thing in most peoples garages with a knob at the bottom. Kind of a wasteful system since the water has to be constantly reheated to keep that temp. Tankless water heaters basically heat the water on the fly when it's in demand so ideally, it uses less energy than traditional heaters, but I assume there is a reason that they aren't in more widespread use.

 

[Viper GTS]

Kinda seems like a well insulated tank would be more efficient than heating on the fly, although maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn't it take a lot of energy very quickly to heat water on the fly? Water has an extremely high capacity for heat, so you'd have to be practically nuking it to get it hot fast. If a traditional water heater reached the temperature slowly, but then didn't require a lot of energy to keep it hot...

I dunno, though. I'd never even heard of a tankless water heater.

Viper GTS

 

[Talon]

This might help.

Demand water heaters

 

[IBhacknU]

Most traditional H20 heaters are well insulated. When you light the pilot on a gas one, you can see the layers of fiberglass around the actual tank.