I have a tankless unit that makes it own power to start the flame, it needs no power what so ever from external sources, there is a wheel that spins as water passes by it producing the spark needed to start the flame. As long as the city is still pushing water I'll have endless hot water. I bought the Bosch Aqua Star. Great product in my opinion.
Rich
in line unit can add only its rated number of BTUs per hour no matter where its located.
a small unit wouldnt help much:(
hot hot do you keep your tank currently?
Any electric on-demand HWH would use an incredible about of power to do any good. You might have to upgrade your service equipment (breaker box and lines to the utility transformer) just to serve this load.
Gas on-demand hot water heaters have there own expensive issues with venting requirments and code restrictions regarding where it can be placed. It may be just an illusion that these are cheaper when you consider installation expenses, availability of replacement parts, etc.
A larger capacity traditional tank HWH in a gas model is the way that I'd go. Water heaters, in addition to size are rated by recovery time (the time it takes to heat the tank back to usuable conditions after all of the hot water is gone). Gas is always superior to electic in the same volume range, and cheaper too, in most areas.
Beachcomber
Forget those low flow shower heads, life is too short to live like a refugee The trick is to find a way to be able to afford these benefits. Doing what i said above with the tankless water heater "After" the Tank type heater will give you way more HW at a single period of time than you should need or want. I Promise. The Tankless can supply water just about continuously at say 3GPM/60F temp rise so if your ground water is 55F then the tankless alone can supply 115 degree water forever. But thats at max capabilities and you never want to run at that level, so if you insert a standard water heater BEFORE the tankless and supply the tankless with 80 or even 70 degree water then the tankless isnt maxed out and can supply that 115 degree water at much higher GPM, ie the tankless is only working at some percent capacity and can handle fluctuations in demand easily. When its operating at max capacity any fluctuation in demand will cause a temperature change. There is continuous mixing of water in a HW tank, cold comes in the top, down the dip tube to the bottom and into the surrounding HW. HW goes out the top of the tank, it cant help but mix. But the water in the tank is much hotter near the tanks top than it is at the bottom. Thats why a 50 gallon HW tank can produce a first hour rating of 79 gallons, you dont have just 50 gallons of HW, you have 50 gallons of "too hot" water so you effectively can get more gallons of "just right" hot water out of it. Plus the tanks heater (gas or electric) comes on when the temp drops to the setpoint and starts adding heat to the contents - these 2 things work together to give you that 79 gallons of HW from the 50 gallon tank. Eric
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