I'm considering building a house and have recently seen the tankless hot water heaters at Lowe's and such. Can anyone comment on personal experience on these and/or if they are worth the investment over your normal hot water tanks? Thanks...

I am in the same spot as you but my reason is due to the triple high electric rates in my rural area. What would be your fuel:gas, propane or electric. Some people love these heater and others think they are a con and don't save what they claim. Because my rates are so high I will save about $400 per year by switching to a proppane Paloma 175,000 BTU unit. Rinni also makes a fine heater from what I've read on this site.

Oh geez, here we go again. I personally think they are pretty darn cool, but there seem to be some debate on the subject. And from what I see I think they are worth the few extra $$. And they used to qualify for a tax incentive I am not sure if that is still the case.

It would be a gas unit. Another quick ? Would be does this heat the water better than a "normal". My unit in my current house takes forever to heat the water on the back side. My house is 1300 sq ft so it doesn't travel that far...

They are supposed to be instant, but traveling through cold pipes will take a few seconds or min.
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Yes, they work on the same idea of a hot water pressure washer, so the idea and the system they work with is very old, been around for years, but just started being used at the lower pressure in a home.

There are those on this board that love them, and those that hate them.
I think over all the argument has been they don't really save the higher dollars that they are told to. And they require a lot of clearnace room that is not always available. Also they will require proper water pressure and volume.

For the good side, they do heat water in a matter of seconds and if you turn the water on and let it go for 10 hours, it will still be hot water.

I looked at them very carefully several years ago. I was wanting to retrofit one into my crawl space to reduce the wait for hot water to fill the line from the heater. With the clearance and venting requirements, the popular Bosch or Paloma units weren't going to fit. I then started to study an ''on the outside wall installation''. It would have been quite doable and left the heater close to the most used sinks.

Then the claimed savings caught my eye. Their estimates of how much gas is used to heat water were several times higher than my hot water heater and gas dryer together use in the summer time. My crap detector went off. Once I realize somebody is lying to me, I lose interest. Maybe somebody can save $400 a year with one, but my water heater and dryer put together don't use $400 worth of gas in a year.

My gas company breaks down the bill into a $24 service charge, and in May, $43 worth of gas which included some freezing water in April. So in the summer we maybe use $10 worth of gas a month. Of course, I am sure if I had a way of tracking it, we use more hot water in the winter, but I can't see it ever coming close to the estimates the comparisons with tankless use.

I think even the stand by loss estimates are high. The last time this came up somebody said something about how many times a day you have to reheat a tank of water. I am working out in my garage next to the heater a lot. I can hardly remember ever noticing it coming on when nobody was in the house to be using hot water.

Claimed savings need to be measured against interest rates too. You might be better off putting the money in the bank, or better yet paying down your credit cards if you run a balance.

My skepticism is not appreciated here by those that make their living selling and installing the tankless ones. I have to wonder if their case is even weaker than I think if my suggestion that people dig out the facts before buying a tankless water heater upsets them so.

I have to agree with labman on this one. I sell regular water heaters and at one time recently they had a sticker on them showing the cost of operation. For a family of four the yearly fuel bill would have been $285. In our house we use gas for cooking, heating water, drying clothes, and heating the house, and in the four worst months I never got a gas bill over $100 per month. Therefore I do not see how a household is going to save $400 a year by using a tankless water heater.
The initial cost is higher for the tankless, and from what I have heard from service men the repairs are higher than with a tank heater. In our area we have water heaters that last upward to fifteen years with never a service call.

Now if you have a family of 6 with two bath rooms, and everyone wants to take a show on Saturday night, of course you can have all the hot water you want, Back when I had my 4 boys at home, I would have gotten one even if it cost more to run.

I have been real interested in some of the shower heaters they use in Europe that just attaches to the show and is electric, But not at a point in my life to do one yet.

Tankless has been the rule in Europe for over 50 years or more. Cost of both gas and electric has been much higher there than in the USA. Tankless saves by not storing any hot water in a tank and saving and by allowing the heater to be placed closer to the source of usage which allows the tankless to supply hot water fast since it does not have to heat up the entire water line to get to where you want to use it. Tankless also allows and endless supply of hot water and in some cases this can be a blessing in large family or high usage area like a restaurant or carwash on the commercial side of things.

If installed exactly as stated in the operation manual you will get many years of trouble free service and when it does need service they are usually easy to repair to the knowledgeable service repair person.

Electric tankless heaters are small in size and can fit almost anywhere while gas units needs to have considerations allowing for a side wall exhaust for by products of combustion removal.

Been using a Paloma P-12 gas tankless to heat my main section of the house and also to supply hot water since 1982. In the front section of the house I use a EMAX/Powerstar since around 1990 for the second bath that is 90 feet away from the main water heater. It allows for real fast hot water without the waste of a 90 foot hot water run.

As a side note. Most folks will not remember that instant water heaters are not new to the USA. Back about 1930 they came on the market here since our cousins had them in europe. Naturally they had to be bigger and better than there's because that is the american way. After a few years of usage people found out that the old style american heaters used 2X as much gas to heat the same amount of water and people stopped buying them allowing our original tankless water heaters to fade away into history. Many years ago I remember removing many of these copper coiled monsters from basements and replacing them with standard tank type.

I just thought I would shed a bit of light on the subject.

It's kind of funny that this is one of the more "controversial" subjects, on this sight.

I think Matt is correct, funny that it gets so many responses. Labman may be correct in his crap detection since most "estimates" of fuel consumtion are garbage. Anybody here get the gas mileage that was claimed on the sticker of your new car? However, I am still in the market for a tankless because I also did my homework. My situation may be unique since I can not access gas and the electric rates are three times higher where my cabin is located compared to my full time home. My electric water heater triples my electric consumption and then I pay 3x the rate too. A propane Rinni unit will save me $400 per year but not everyone. I think every reader must crunch their own numbers and do their home work specific to their home. Tankless will save you tons or cost you tons, remember these units go for a about $1100 compared to a $300 gas heater.