TRoglodyte wrote: I would check the local codes, the PVC vent sounds sketchy to me?
The high-efficiency tankless units put out very low temperature exhaust. AIUI, PVC is actually better than galvanized here, because otherwise water vapor in the exhaust will condense on the vent piping and rust it.
Hungary Bill wrote: D'Oh! When you said the guy you talked to stocked Takagi, I thought that meant it was the only option... High flow flex with a safety valve. Got it.
No no don't use safety valve! Stupid phone, sorry. The boilers can flow enough gas to trip them, they aren't meant for 199k btus..
No worries on the price check. I can still check if you want, did you buy it on Amazon?
I had a Rinnai tankless heater installed last fall - 10 GPM. Got the friend/family discount of $2500 installed, with a long gas line extension. It is located very close to our 2 showers and it's been fantastic.
Seeing the installed equipment makes me think it's DIY friendly with basic mechanical aptitude.
Having recently reworked a few of the gas lines in the ex's house, installing one of these wouldn't scare me. Of all the work I did in her house, running gas pipe turned out to be one of the easiest. Depending on what I do in my house, one may be an option if I convert to gas (currently oil heat; everything electric).
The office I'm currently working at has small 120v electric heaters at some of the bathroom sinks. It's nice.
Do check local codes. It may be considered a gas boiler and need a permit and inspection. Typically, you do not need to be licensed to install things in your own house - but again - check. This sort of thing varies greatly from town to town. All of the work I did on the ex's house was inspected and signed off on.
Not considered a boiler by WA dept of health (king County anyway)
Java: you got mail.
Short story: Amazon order canceled. Now looking at the Navien 240A (with a recirculation pump feature). In the reading I've done, this seems a lot like the boiler / water heater we had in Hungary (which we had nothing but pressure problems with)
Glad to see the hiccups are coming in early though 
Good times.
Replied. Is your house plumbed for recirc?
No, but its not that long of a run to the furthest faucet. I'm hoping to have it set up before the water heater gets here (hope in one hand... you know the rest).
Well your just jumping Right in! Pex is your friend.... Really easy to work with.
Yeah, Wading in slow just sucks when you get to certain areas
Is this a bad time to mention that most of our pipes are galvanized?
In reply to Hungary Bill:
Might as well replace them all while your in there running a recirc....
The project creep begins 
Wish I'd seen this earlier. I'm a master plumber and have done many of these things. First and foremost you need to understand something about gas. Gas fired units require a certain pressure to work. Not enough pressure and the thing locks out. Gas pressure is better described as gas volume for this exercise. Think of a water hose. The bigger the hose, the more water you get. But, thats not the only factor at work here. The length of the pipe, the number of bends in the pipe, and the number of other things competing for that gas all have to be considered. There are gas charts all over the internet showing how many BTUs a gas pipe can carry based on pipe diameter, and distance. You need to factor in the heating system, the stove, the dryer and anything else you have that runs on gas. The one you picked out is 200,000BTUs. Thats probably twice the size of your heating system and 5 or 6 times as large as your existing water heater. So, lets assume your system was by some miraculous reason way oversized by the plumber that initially installed it. Next question. Is the gas meter on the outside of your house large enough? My guess is you have a 250,000 or maybe if its a huge house, a 350,000 meter. If its not big enough... you loose. Next question, Is the gas line from the street large enough to carry the extra BTUs. If not, you loose again. Next and most important. Most utility companies have to grant permission to install any new gas fired appliance that is larger than what is being replaced, Why? Because the pipes in the street are not adequate to carry additional loads. In the last year, I was called out to tie in appliances that heating companies installed. They are allowed to do heat, but can't mess with the fuel. They installed, got paid, said call a plumber. I go out, gas company says no! Three different people with houses with no heat. I leave and they end up calling a propane company to switch all of there nat gas stuff over to propane, which cost three times as much. There really is a lot that goes into retro fitting these things. New installs are fairly easy. Retros really suck, if you are even allowed to install them.
Hey everyone, sorry it took a while to get back to ya but after all that we decided to replace our water heater with another tank unit.
In reply to tr8todd:
Thanks a ton for the info man. I did some digging and found some charts that gave the BTU rating for our gas lines (diameter vs distance, and adding in the bends). So it was looking like we were good to go with the new heater, AND our meter was up to the task as well.
So back on subject, and just kind of a wrap up on the whole story:
We actually don't go through much hot water (yet). My wife and I are really the only two big water users in the house and even on the weekend we can take showers within a reasonable amount of time of each other. The big reasons we were really leaning tankless were based on 3-things:
our house is 1-bath which is a drawback when it comes time to sell it (you know... 10-years or so from now). We thought uf we can minimize the drawbacks of a one bath house by installing an endless hot water heater NOW then that'd help with the resale value down the line.
we have two kids, and we want one more. But one's 3-years old, and the other is 6-months old. So hot water is a non-issue now. BUT eventually it's going to be an issue. We were just trying to nip this one in the bud with the tankless unit.
Our current hot water heater is old and has started leaking water all over our basement floor so we HAVE to replace it with something. We usually like to replace things with a quality replacement that won't need changing in the near future. To us this means "tankless now". But as we look at things, there are plenty of quality tank units that are 1/4 the cost.
When it comes to the heaters we were looking at, our research told us that we wanted a tankless unit with recirculation capability. Tankless units without recirc had reports of 90-seconds of cold water running when you turned the faucet on before it started heating up. Not the end of the world, but kind of annoying.
We also decided we wanted a "condensing" unit. A non-condensing unit heats up the exhaust so the acidic residue from the burning of the gas says evaporated until it exits the house (thus requiring stainless piping for an exhaust). A condensing unit has a much cooler exhaust, but comes with the caveat that it needs a small pump to rid itself of that acidic dew that's going to build up. No big deal
The unit we decided on was $1800 + tax and was available locally through Java (thanks man!). We read the instructions and everything looked surprisingly SUPER easy. We figured we could have it in and plumbed in a weekend for a grand total of $2500 (this gave us some buffer room on time and money)
Unfortunately the manufacturer will NOT honor their warranty unless a professional installs it. For professional installation we were getting quotes from $4200-$5500.
Me being me, I initially said "screw the warranty, I can fix it" buuuuuut kind of realized I was being optimistic and eventually backed down.
There were a few other heaters under consideration, that would honor a warranty with "DIY install" but in the end we kind of came to our senses.
We can buy (and we did buy) a tank unit with a 10-year warranty from Lowes for $500 and install it ourselves in about 2-hours. That means if it were equity we were worried about, we could buy a NEW hot water heater when we move away and say "look, we put in a new hot water heater for ya" instead of "look, here's a 10-year-old inline unit".
Another way to look at it is: we can replace this one 4 times before we get to the cost of one inline unit.
So yeah, that's that. On the bright side Mrs. Hungary is super impressed with my incredible plumbing skills 
Good times
In reply to Hungary Bill:
FWIW I'd pay more to not have a tankless unit. I have an under-sink Bosch unit in IL and it's never worked well. Our place in MS has a larger tankless Bosch in the master bedroom, and even after posting here for advice it's either full-hot or no-hot.
I don't remember the brand offhand, but I put in a 50-gallon tank heater in our upstairs apartment in IL that's high-efficiency AND able to produce constant hot water. It's truly the best of both worlds, and was about $1700. Unfortunately, I can't install one in MS without major remodeling, as there's no place for a large tank without remodeling the master suite.
petegossett wrote: In reply to Hungary Bill: FWIW I'd pay *more* to not have a tankless unit. I have an under-sink Bosch unit in IL and it's never worked well. Our place in MS has a larger tankless Bosch in the master bedroom, and even after posting here for advice it's either full-hot or no-hot. I don't remember the brand offhand, but I put in a 50-gallon tank heater in our upstairs apartment in IL that's high-efficiency AND able to produce constant hot water. It's truly the best of both worlds, and was about $1700. Unfortunately, I can't install one in MS without major remodeling, as there's no place for a large tank without remodeling the master suite.
I was wondering if it is possible to have a 10 or 20 gallon tank, and have that routed through a tankless (or vice-versa). Never run out, don't have to wait for it to kick in.
My standard quote for a tankless is $2800, and then I work up or down from there. Need to make about a grand to install one after parts and permits. More if I have to relocate a bunch of pipes, or run a new gas main. I like the Rinnai units, but you have to use their venting and thats a little pricey if you have to truck it across a basement to get to an outside wall. There is one my supply house sells for around a grand. I haven't yet installed one, but the other plumbers seem to like it a lot. Vents with regular PVC. Its made by American water heaters. Most of those things are warranted for 10 or 12 years.
We have a Rinnai for our domestic hot water and radiant floor heat, running off of propane. Love it, super quiet and very efficient (combined with an efficient house) means we're saving a bunch of money monthly vs heating with oil + electric tanked water heater at our last rental.
MTN: You can. The unit we were looking at had a small tank and internal recirc capability. The idea being that you get immediate hot water from the small tank, and in-line portion takes over when it starts detecting flow. The tank is smaller than 10-20 gallons though, and it kind of reduces the efficiency savings (not really a drawback from our standpoint)
Skierd: We had semi-tankless hot water, and radiant floor heating in Hungary (extremely common overseas). I thought we'd never go back to forced air EVER. Unfortunately the amount of work needed to do the same in our current house is a bit above what we consider reasonable. Were I ever to build new/ remodel/ just get a hair up my ass I would go radiant again in a heartbeat!
Has anyone used electric tankless water heaters?
I'm replacing the water heater in my shop/guest house and would like to go tankless because something like 200 days of the year will have zero hot water usage and 100 more days will have a gallon or less of hot water usage so a tanked water heater seems like overkill. But the gas tankless heaters all require maintenance and venting and will require some gas line plumbing - which I don't mind but reducing that will allow me more time to work on the other thousand projects in the shop.
I'll be rewiring the building from scratch so running a high-amp 220 line doesn't seem too hard - no harder or more expensive than running a gas and vent line anyway.
The building has a single bathroom, one bedroom, laundry hookups, and a small kitchen/dining area in addition to my garage and shop. The usage would be for guests and the occasional party. So I doubt anyone will be washing a ton of dishes while showering and doing laundry. But I would still like it to be comfortable when guests do come to stay.
I'm in Columbus, Ohio and it looks like the average groundwater temp is 52 degrees. It looks like for a good shower experience I think probably a 50 to 60 degree temperature rise would be reasonable right? At about 1.5-2 gallons per minute.
The Rheem RTE-13 is rated at 1.4 gpm 60 degree rise or 2.0 gpm 50 degree rise. The RTE-18 is 1.8 and 2.6 respectively. That doesn't leave a lot of overhead with someone showering. Would either of those provide a satisfying experience?
My other thought is to put one RTE-13 in the bathroom and one RTE-13 in the kitchen. They're tiny and only $200. The only disadvantage is I would have to buy two 60 amp breakers and two runs of 6-gauge wire. I'm guessing my total outlay there would be roughly equal to the gas tankless with installation hardware.
I'm probably overthinking this, but I want to get my permit package done and put in this week so I'd like to make a decision. Any advice?
dculberson wrote: Has anyone used electric tankless water heaters? I'll be rewiring the building from scratch so running a high-amp 220 line doesn't seem too hard - no harder or more expensive than running a gas and vent line anyway. I'm in Columbus, Ohio and it looks like the average groundwater temp is 52 degrees. It looks like for a good shower experience I think probably a 50 to 60 degree temperature rise would be reasonable right? At about 1.5-2 gallons per minute.
How large a power feed do you have? Are there a hundred amps to spare on the main breaker if a guest turns the shower on during the summer, with AC/etc running?
What maintenance are you concerned about on the gas unit? AFAIK the only regular maintenance they require is flushing the heat exchanger, and that's not dependent on the power source.
I will be completely rewiring this building, with a new 200 amp panel, and don't foresee the breaker or load for either of these being a problem. It's basically a tiny 1 bedroom apartment and big garage. Not a lot of load. This building has its own electric entrance and meter, separate from the house.
The flushing is the issue. The electric ones only require cleaning a screen, no flushing. I don't know why the fuel source makes a difference but it apparently does - maybe the gas burners get the water hot enough at the point of contact with the heat exchanger that the scale builds up more readily?
Speaking of the heater setup, here's the plumbing that keeps mine working.
I didn't know Audi made water heaters! :)
skierd wrote: Speaking of the heater setup, here's the plumbing that keeps mine working.
Jee beasties!
Actually that looks a lot like our Hungarian setup (radiant wall heating, floor heating, and hot water heating)
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