New Water Heater Regulations - April 16

Well, that's just lovely. The govt screwing the folks again. I especially like the part about an electric WH bigger than 55 being mandated to be of the heat pump variety. Faced with that, most people are probably going to buy two 40 gallon non-heat pump ones. There goes that bright idea.

And then they say the new higher priced WH's will save a whopping $1 a month. What's the pay back time on that?

Looks like it comes down to whether you want dielectric fittings or not. Otherwise, I don't see much difference. I've never seen dielectrics on gas lines before. My WHs have always been plumbed in without using anything special. Black pipe for the gas. No problems either.

Same here. I have always run the water pipes directly to the water heater. When I was working for a plumber in the 80's he onlty used those flex pipes if the customer wanted them, That may have been twice, in 10 years, because most people dont know anything. They just working plumbing. Unless for some odd reason the pipes or tank are meant to move, there is no reason to use those flex pipes. We did use dielectric unions on copper because of the steel tank.

Also if you buy an energy star rated HWH you can get up to a $300 rebate.

They got me already. I bought & installed a new Propane unit last month, 4 days after it was manufactured. It looks 25-30% fatter than the replaced unit, and I had to use flex fittings to match the old height & depth.

Looks like we need a law to prevent the installation of more than 1 water heater per home.

the bigger diameter allows space for more insulation, saving you energy