DAFI instantaneous water heaters - any experience anyone?

[tinnews]

I've been looking at ideas for providing hot water for new washroom and for our existing kitchen sink which is very distant from the hot water cylinder.

I was looking at unvented 10 to 15 litre ones but although they are basically cheap the added costs of expansion vessels, pressure reducing valves, etc. push the cost up quite a lot.

So I'm now considering instantaneous water heaters like an electric shower uses but connected to a tap. While looking I have come across the very compact and cheap DAFI ones, they're well under £100 and appear very simple to install. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Their main oddity/downside is that for >7.3kW they use "two phase, 400 volts" which is downright wierd. They do a standard single phase

7.3kW version though which should be adequate for our requirements. I have a redundant (ex Sauna) position on the consumer unit I can use.

You can find DAFI on Ebay or at

or at

[Tim Watts]

For a tap, I would steer clear of "stupid" cheap instantaeous ones.

I had one and it was crap (Hyco) - the upper end temperature regulation was

60C by mechanical stat which meant it was very easy to get water hotter than that coming out of a partly closed off tap for a moment.

I switched to this:

it has so far been excellent - with adjustable upper temperature and proper electronic power regulation. Also has an inbuilt adjustable flow valve so you can fix it so taht a full on tap will produce, say, 30C water whilst is turned off a bit, then the water temp will rise to the heater's setpoint (eg 45C - range is 35C to 55C).

Internally, it seems well built (German) with a metal cased heater unit and well designed electrinics (the triac uses the incoming cold water for cooling its heatsink - I thought that rather clever).

Cheers

[Pishi]

replying to Tim Watts, Pishi wrote: I disagree. I've used a 4.5kw Dafi for years,First in my caravan then moved it into a log cabin. It has finally stopped working (leaking) but I'm looking to get a rreplacement of the same typw.