Lets talk about water heaters!

[Fabrik8]

Fabrik8, if you're doing the maintenance work anyhow you might look into a new sacrificial anode for it, too.

Yeah, I'll probably do that at the same time. I couldn't find any part numbers or length specs for the anode, so I'm going to pull it and take it to Lowe's. I think it's a combined anode and dip tube, because a separate anode would be too easy.. Might just put a second traditional anode in the blanked hole on top instead if I can find a shorty for it.

I need to learn about anode chemistry in this context, because I've seen about 4 different alloys so far. Magnesium, zinc, aluminum, copper-something.

I found the owners manual on Whirlpool's site and it mentions Lowe's a lot in the manual, so it's apparently a cheapie store-exclusive unit.


I just happened to use the bathroom a little while ago at a place with a point of use electric Eemax tankless unit on the sink.

 

[shawn]

Shawn I'd be all over natural gas WH if it was available in my area!

Agreed on all points. Propane is probably too expensive to be competitive in any case. I was responding to Chris's question about whether or not there was a payback on NG vs electric.

 

[Fabrik8]

A gas water heater will save $2-300/yr over an electric, all else being equal. That is just based on consumption. If you only have gas heat and are paying $10/mo in the summer for a connection fee, you can come close to heating your water for free during the warm months.

That's actually pretty compelling right there, as I'm more interested in offsetting the additional cost of a decent tankless unit and the other installation costs than I am with the monthly energy savings. We'd be going from electric to gas, yes.

We did just have gas heat, and then added a gas range but the consumption is obviously almost nothing compared to winter gas heat. We can't do a gas crawlspace water heater though, so an external tankless would be the path to go.

I think I'll revisit this a little later down the road whenever this cheapie storage heater is ready to replace. I'm not expecting much from a $3xx dollar Lowes-exclusive unit, but it's exactly 6 years old. We'll see after this weekend's repair and sediment flushing sessions. Hopefully I have a nice amount of time to work this into the upgrade plan instead of the "crap, the water heater doesn't work" scrambling when it dies suddenly.

 

[336wheeler]

With the external tankless gas units, just be sure to heavily insulate the mains supply and HW distribution pipes that are exposed to ambient >> my sis-in-law in Raleigh had her mains supply pipe bust on the incoming side of her external tankless gas WH. In Raleigh! It gets cold down there, but not that cold.

 

[Fabrik8]

The wife got pissed off because she only had 7 minutes of hot water in the shower. Come to find out she had the water cranked all the way up, so no real surprise that she killed the 46 gallon tank in 7 minutes. With March incoming water temps. It was a steam bath in that room when I went to address her yelling.

I can take a 15 minute bleary-eyed shower in the morning and not really drop off in temperature at the end, with a partially functional water heater. But at a more normal water volume. I only get a tiny amount of steam on the mirror corner, because the fan needs replaced.

Sigh.

Replacing the lower Tstat today, and flushing it out with the transfer pump. The upper Tstat got hit by a last minute shopping delay, so it will get done some other day. The upper isn't the problem though.