Tankless info from consumer reports, Tankless...Bahhhhh

[master plumber mark]

I just stumbled onto this info tonight, sorry that
it is about a year old....


no one really beleives any of this "non-green horseshit" from
consumer reports



like I have stated on my web site...

take the money and pack the home with insulation...
install better windows...... THAT is where you gain
a great payback...


INSULATION......this is not very sexy, not very complicated and extremely boring after it is installed...

and its not brain surgery ....

any dumbass can install it. and get a 30% payback forever..

[Runs with bison]

The article is not a bad one, it is one of those I looked at when first evaluating whether or not tankless made financial sense for me. If you want fast payback, use a 1.5-1.6 gpm showerhead instead. Cost is around $30-$50 depending on what you choose. Rate of return is about 100% annually.

However, good luck "packing a home with insulation" and getting a 30% annual return unless it has very little insulation to begin with. While I've done a number of insulation projects, the areas that need it the most often can't be fixed...or if they can, not so easily. Good luck adding insulation thickness cheaply in a cathedral ceiling or uninsulated basement space. And from my own projects insulation is just a minor part of the cost where energy savings are highest. By the time you remove the drywall, insulate, put up new drywall and paint the cost can be quite high and the time investment considerable. The areas that are easiest to add insulation to are open attics...which already tend to have passably high R values to begin with.

It's too bad that the average builder does such a poor job of insulating a home, because it is a lot more expensive to retrofit in places they missed (or skipped and concealed.) Ditto for leaky, uninsulated HVAC duct work.

Windows? Now there is a poor return on investment...unless they have to be replaced anyway. It is really expensive compared to selecting a higher efficiency water heater or higher efficiency furnace. Heck, the payout on a new fridge is probably quicker...and that is really slow. But when replacing anyway, higher efficiency windows make sense.

Besides showerheads, the really easy money is in things like CFL's.

[zl700]

Consumer reports, same mag that has been accused of supporting advertisers, sued and lost on false reports and admitted to incomplete evaluations.
Regarding some posters here, who could trust or respect a person that uses a avitar of a hick or a pic of plumber that's dirty from doing numerous drain cleanings when discussing high-tech on-demand heaters. Installs of advanced Tankless technology is best left to technicians with proper tools, meters and combustion equipment.

[Runs with bison]

It's been a long time since I subscribed to Consumer Reports, but I recall them having a strict policy against advertising. They wouldn't even allow folks to distribute reprints of their ratings on showroom floors which had various salesman complaining when I was shopping for stuff. We couldn't even get permission to use one of their articles as part of a "how to" for a non-profit new homebuyer information seminar.

Not that I think their testing is perfect. They often target different factors than what I find important. They really seem to have dropped the ball on toilets, and consistently so. I've never considered CR to be the be-all, end-all authority. They do however provide an independent evaluation, sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

[master plumber mark]

Consumer reports, same mag that has been accused of supporting advertisers, sued and lost on false reports and admitted to incomplete evaluations.
Regarding some posters here, who could trust or respect a person that uses a avitar of a hick or a pic of plumber that's dirty from doing numerous drain cleanings when discussing high-tech on-demand heaters. Installs of advanced Tankless technology is best left to technicians with proper tools, meters and combustion equipment.

dude, I am sorry that my avatar is not sexy enough for you...

if that is all it takes to earn your trust,
maybe I will change mine,,,....

as far as being a dirty hick business man,
I have had to make payroll for my employees
for well over 30 years now .....every week.


Our great president Obama never has had to ever run a business
or make a payroll, and I would wager that you voted for him.......


Also, I can dress up fine when I need to impress
petty little souls like you


Now does this avatar give you warm fuzzies???

.

[Cookie]

The article is not a bad one, it is one of those I looked at when first evaluating whether or not tankless made financial sense for me. If you want fast payback, use a 1.5-1.6 gpm showerhead instead. Cost is around $30-$50 depending on what you choose. Rate of return is about 100% annually.

However, good luck "packing a home with insulation" and getting a 30% annual return unless it has very little insulation to begin with. While I've done a number of insulation projects, the areas that need it the most often can't be fixed...or if they can, not so easily. Good luck adding insulation thickness cheaply in a cathedral ceiling or uninsulated basement space. And from my own projects insulation is just a minor part of the cost where energy savings are highest. By the time you remove the drywall, insulate, put up new drywall and paint the cost can be quite high and the time investment considerable. The areas that are easiest to add insulation to are open attics...which already tend to have passably high R values to begin with.

It's too bad that the average builder does such a poor job of insulating a home, because it is a lot more expensive to retrofit in places they missed (or skipped and concealed.) Ditto for leaky, uninsulated HVAC duct work.

Windows? Now there is a poor return on investment...unless they have to be replaced anyway. It is really expensive compared to selecting a higher efficiency water heater or higher efficiency furnace. Heck, the payout on a new fridge is probably quicker...and that is really slow. But when replacing anyway, higher efficiency windows make sense.

Besides showerheads, the really easy money is in things like CFL's.

Excellent post.

[Runs with bison]

Our great president Obama never has had to ever run a business or make a payroll, and I would wager that you voted for him.......

And the last president was "elected" by folks like yourself, partially because he was a businessman. Never mind that he had driven various enterprises into bankruptcy. "Arbusto" was the name of one...how appropriate. The one that was successful he was just a figurehead for.

He continued along a "business friendly" course driving our whole nation toward bankruptcy through conservative supply siding principles.

That's not an historical aberration. The previous time this happened conservative businessman Hoover was in charge of the show. In his defense he inherited much of the mess from other conservative presidents. Unfortunately for the country Hoover had 3 years in which not to address the problem "conservative" policies had created. Fortunately Dubya only had 1. The 2 year difference is that between the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

But your silly political blatherings have nothing to do with the economics of such projects.

[Dana]

Uh, dude, "NEW" ???

That hit-job on tankless heaters is over a year old now!

And it's barely worth the toilet-paper it's smeared on, IMHO. Because...

A: They don't state the financial assumptions about fuel pricing or the cost of money- no hint at all about how (or if) they calculated a net-present-value on the cost delta.

B: They overstate hot water usage (which improves the picture for tanks, but is fairly neutral for tankless) at ~20% above the national average for a family of 4 (on which the DOE's EF test was designed)

C: They doped the water to exaggerate liming/scaling effects on a tankless HX. (Hard-water areas really DO need to be mindful, but mine went 15+ years without even a hint of scale issues or any other maintenance on city water in New England, retiring it fully-working when I installed a new heating system that included a buffer tank with an internal HX for the DHW.) It's a useful warning, but irrelevant for the majority of users.

D: They don't address the REAL reasons most peops opt for 'em: Filling huge spas &/or very high volume HW use and space-savings.

E: They don't name the "outside lab", nor do they give any of the raw data and only the vaguest sketchiest description of test methodology, never mentioning size of individual draws (which can degrade the efficiency of a tankless dramatically at the low end) or any other factors other than daily volumes (volumes that are ~20% over the national average for a family of 4., as previously noted.)

This is a hit-job, not a well reasoned analysis. It's designed to overstate the real-world efficiency of a tank, and exaggerate the maintenance issues of a tankless.

Take the efficiency information from people who actually measure stuff without an agenda, and under varying circumstances to determine true average efficiencies for different patterns of use:

http://www.aceee.org/conf/08whforum/...s/1a_davis.pdf

(Note the above isn't a "rah-rah tankless" piece by any means- a 92% steady-state thermal efficiency condensing tankless only hits ~75% average efficiency in one of the use profiles. Read & ponder. There's a heluva lot more real comparative info there than the CU piece.)

The financials you'll have to do on your own- fuel prices vary by as much as 600% BTU-for-BTU between low-price natural gas markets vs. high price propane markets, and it makes a HUGE difference on if & where the net-present-value boundaries go positive. The one-size-fits-all financial analysis conclusions of the CU piece is utter CRAP!

Will the "average" family even make it back on fuel savings? Depends a lot on the the price of NG over the next decade, (and I'm guessin' not), but fuel savings is about the 4th or 5th reason on the prioritized list of why most people who go tankless make their decisions, behind arbitrarily high draw volume (not to be confused with high flow) & space savings (the two most cited, in my limited experience), and appliance longevity (a distant 3rd.)

They also don't compare some of the better low-end cheap to install versions that are ~80% efficient (eg: Bosch 1600H), which still beat tanks soundly on average efficiency, but are nowhere near as complex or expensive to install as Noritiz & Takagis. (Atmospheric draft therefore B-venting OK, ignition powered by water flow so it needs no electricity, etc.) NPV on those looks pretty good for most propane users, if you can tolerate the 30-117KBTU modulation range. It's good enough for a single-shower even in cold-water country, maybe two in FL or SoCal but it's HX is fairly high-head, not designed for super high flow on the water side. It's about right for weekend cabins & condos, etc.- VERY low maintenance.)

BTW: Don't confuse me for a huge tankless fan- I fully understand their merits & limitations (I think they make better modulating combi space-heating/DHW boilers than water heaters, even if they're more efficient than tanks.). Still, I've yet to meet anyone who has lived with one for awhile who is dying to go back to a tank. But that consumer-reports piece is a downright LOUSY bit of analysis, and gives the reader no tools or information by which to analyze whether it makes sense for them, and how they use hot water.

[zl700]

Love the new Avitar!

[master plumber mark]

Love the new Avitar!

It makes my day that you like the new avatar...

,
Tankless Dudes,.......

and I am sorry that this is not
"new information" but none of you have ever
posted it to this site before,
and for well over a year now its been out.....


so I suppose its "new" for here.

I guess if consumer reports does not praise tankless,
you must discreit the source....


It seems pretty legit to me
and you can take it or leave it...

I am just the messenger, I did not make this stuff
up just to piss all you tankless dudes off....


as far as political talk goes, what has
our currency been driven down to today???.


does my new avatar make me seem more credible??

[Runs with bison]

as far as political talk goes, what has our currency been driven down to today???

That illustrates the problems with conservatives. They sound as if they were born yesterday. Our currency went in the dumpster quite some time ago, the run up in gold and oil should have clued you in several years ago. Folks like me saw this coming back in 2000. Now, after a lost decade conservatives still don't get it.

To get rid of the Bush deficit legacy our currency is going to become a lot less valuable over the coming years. Call it the Dubya Tax...it hits those of us who actually saved, not the dipsticks that overleveraged themselves in a "ownership society" that was really a "debtor society"...now a "receivership society."

There is only so long the Fed and the rest of the world can hold down our interest rates. The future was mortgaged over the past 8 years...we're just renting until the Chinese foreclose.

What we need is Volcker calling the shots IF/when we pull out of this recession. He's the one that deserves credit for slaying stagflation back in the 80's. There's a whole lotta elephant manure to clean up.

[master plumber mark]

That illustrates the problems with conservatives. They sound as if they were born yesterday. Our currency went in the dumpster quite some time ago, the run up in gold and oil should have clued you in several years ago. Folks like me saw this coming back in 2000. Now, after a lost decade conservatives still don't get it.

To get rid of the Bush deficit legacy our currency is going to become a lot less valuable over the coming years. Call it the Dubya Tax...it hits those of us who actually saved, not the dipsticks that overleveraged themselves in a "ownership society" that was really a "debtor society"...now a "receivership society."

There is only so long the Fed and the rest of the world can hold down our interest rates. The future was mortgaged over the past 8 years...we're just renting until the Chinese foreclose.

What we need is Volcker calling the shots IF/when we pull out of this recession. He's the one that deserves credit for slaying stagflation back in the 80's. There's a whole lotta elephant manure to clean up.

------------------------------------------------------------

Runs...
who told you I was a conservative??

Me and Ian are " best buddies liberals"
go ahead and just ask him some time....

so are you saying

If you own a business ,
and go to work every day on time and sober ,,,
then you have to be a conservative??.

.

if you saw this comming 10 years ago, I assume
you also invested heavily in gold when it was 375 per ounce??

right??.

[Runs with bison]

if you saw this comming 10 years ago, I assume you also invested heavily in gold when it was 375 per ounce??

I've stayed out of gold and intend to since it is a speculative thing with much less intrinsic worth in today's world. It is flat or down most of the time...waiting for gold to spike is like waiting on someone to die to collect an inheritance: it is both morbid and unhealthy for the soul. Trying to time this sort of run up relies on skills that few mortal men possess, myself included. As the old saw goes, "the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent."

However, I have done far better in the Great Recession than all but a few of the best Bear Market funds. I subscribe to the "get rich slowly" approach rather than chasing the fast buck. "Buy and hold" is for suckers with this fraudulently structured market...as I learned the hard way at the first of the decade. That's why I'm still on target for retirement in my mid 50's despite the so called "lost decade."

[master plumber mark]

[quote=Runs with bison;232127]I've stayed out of gold and intend to since it is a speculative thing with much less intrinsic worth in today's world. It is flat or down most of the time...waiting for gold to spike is like waiting on someone to die to collect an inheritance: it is both morbid and unhealthy for the soul. Trying to time this sort of run up relies on skills that few mortal men possess, myself included. As the old saw goes, "the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent."

quote]

On this I totally agree with you....
most specualtion of any kind and in gold is actually morbid and unhealthy for the soul.....

[ChuckS]

Our great president Obama never has had to ever run a business
or make a payroll, and I would wager that you voted for him.......

He had a payroll during the campaign. No, he didn't have to struggle to make it but he technically had one.