I need to replace a 40-gallon water heater (natural gas) and am leaning towards a tankless unit. I'm looking for recommendations on a sensible unit for what we have and have a number of questions. Here is the entire scenario with my thought process. Am I missing anything major?
We have 1800 sq foot ranch with 4 people living in the house. We have 1 3/4 bathroom (one with standard size tub, the other with stand-up shower). Our living room was originally a two-car garage and a previous home owner converted it. The water heater and furnace are located in a small closet actually in the living room backing up to an exterior wall. The main circuit breaker is 200 amp and is located on an adjacent exterior wall in the living room. I have no idea how much the gas line draws and if it's already at adequate capacity for a tankless heater. The house is on a concrete slab, no basement, no crawl space below, there is a crawl space attic.
The two showers are both at the opposite end of the house from the water heater and it takes a good minute--90 seconds to get warm water. I'm okay with that. I understand the physics behind it. Over the summer we completely remodeled the bathrooms and upon using the new showers the shower heads give a lot more flow, but the hot water now lasts about 15 minutes and then no one showers for at least 30 minutes. That's okay now with young kids, but with two daughters and teenage years rapidly approaching they won't want to shower at night so mom and dad can shower in the morning.
My questions:
What rate is a sensible gpm? Is 6.4 enough? How many BTU is enough? What does 199,000 BTU do for me as opposed to 150,000 BTU?
Should I looking for a condensing unit?
Being in the northeast, how do I need to address winter temperature concerns?
What is a good model that has shown ability to hold up?
What upgrades to the water line should I consider?
What standard maintenance am I looking at?
My general thought is that between the small closet space where the existing tank sits, it may pose challenges to install a larger tank. I also am hopeful I will get some return on the value of my home by "upgrading" to a tankless unit.
We have 1800 sq foot ranch with 4 people living in the house. We have 1 3/4 bathroom (one with standard size tub, the other with stand-up shower). Our living room was originally a two-car garage and a previous home owner converted it. The water heater and furnace are located in a small closet actually in the living room backing up to an exterior wall. The main circuit breaker is 200 amp and is located on an adjacent exterior wall in the living room. I have no idea how much the gas line draws and if it's already at adequate capacity for a tankless heater. The house is on a concrete slab, no basement, no crawl space below, there is a crawl space attic.
The two showers are both at the opposite end of the house from the water heater and it takes a good minute--90 seconds to get warm water. I'm okay with that. I understand the physics behind it. Over the summer we completely remodeled the bathrooms and upon using the new showers the shower heads give a lot more flow, but the hot water now lasts about 15 minutes and then no one showers for at least 30 minutes. That's okay now with young kids, but with two daughters and teenage years rapidly approaching they won't want to shower at night so mom and dad can shower in the morning.
My questions:
What rate is a sensible gpm? Is 6.4 enough? How many BTU is enough? What does 199,000 BTU do for me as opposed to 150,000 BTU?
Should I looking for a condensing unit?
Being in the northeast, how do I need to address winter temperature concerns?
What is a good model that has shown ability to hold up?
What upgrades to the water line should I consider?
What standard maintenance am I looking at?
My general thought is that between the small closet space where the existing tank sits, it may pose challenges to install a larger tank. I also am hopeful I will get some return on the value of my home by "upgrading" to a tankless unit.
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