jwstewar
Active member
We have a Noritz whole house tankless water heater. We traded copper plumbing and an 80 gallon conventional tank for the heater and pex plumbing. Overall we have been very happy with it. It seems to save us quite a bit of propane compared to the old house and the 30 & then later 40 gallon water heaters that we had in it.
One thing that we aren't 100% happy about though is the length of time it takes to get hot water to our kitchen faucet. We made a mistake when we designed the house. Because of how the basement is laid out, it made the most sense to put the pex manifold system on the south wall of the basement. Unfortunately, what we didn't take into account is all of the water uses are on the north side of the house. I had thought about moving the heater & the pex system, but now that the basement is finished, that is kind of out of the question. So combined with the amount of time that it takes for the tankless water heater to come up to speed + the length of the line running to the kitchen sink it can take awhile to get hot water. This can be annoying if you just want a quick burst of hot water to rinse something off or even if we run a full cycle on the dishwasher. Normally we run the short cycle (35 - minutes vs. 125 minutes for a normal cycle) so it isn't a big deal, but on the long cycle we'll get a warning from the dishwasher the temp isn't high enough. We are considering getting a small point of use tankless and mounting either under the sink or in the basement right under the sink.
If we were to do this. Should I turn the hot water line off and and split the cold line and run cold to the new little buy or use the hot water line that is currently coming there and use the heaters in series and use the efficiency of the "big" propane if we are using a bunch of water vs. the relatively small electric one? I've heard of using heaters in series before to increase the flow. If we are running it enough to get the hot water to the new heater and the water is the 120 degrees that we have it set at, in theory the electric one wouldn't kick in correct?
We are thinking maybe something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stiebel-Elt...465?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c61fbda91
One thing that we aren't 100% happy about though is the length of time it takes to get hot water to our kitchen faucet. We made a mistake when we designed the house. Because of how the basement is laid out, it made the most sense to put the pex manifold system on the south wall of the basement. Unfortunately, what we didn't take into account is all of the water uses are on the north side of the house. I had thought about moving the heater & the pex system, but now that the basement is finished, that is kind of out of the question. So combined with the amount of time that it takes for the tankless water heater to come up to speed + the length of the line running to the kitchen sink it can take awhile to get hot water. This can be annoying if you just want a quick burst of hot water to rinse something off or even if we run a full cycle on the dishwasher. Normally we run the short cycle (35 - minutes vs. 125 minutes for a normal cycle) so it isn't a big deal, but on the long cycle we'll get a warning from the dishwasher the temp isn't high enough. We are considering getting a small point of use tankless and mounting either under the sink or in the basement right under the sink.
If we were to do this. Should I turn the hot water line off and and split the cold line and run cold to the new little buy or use the hot water line that is currently coming there and use the heaters in series and use the efficiency of the "big" propane if we are using a bunch of water vs. the relatively small electric one? I've heard of using heaters in series before to increase the flow. If we are running it enough to get the hot water to the new heater and the water is the 120 degrees that we have it set at, in theory the electric one wouldn't kick in correct?
We are thinking maybe something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stiebel-Elt...465?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c61fbda91
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