When I built my home, I put a tankless water heater in the attic so as to have adequate hot water for our garden tub. The plumber assurred me that it would not freeze (Atlanta) but he, of course, was wrong. It did, pipes broke and our new ceiling was messed up.
So I repaced it with a tank and a tank doesn’t freeze but it can leak and it doesn’t provide adequate hot water for the tub.
I now see several new tankless heaters that say they are freeze proofed to -10 F. They can apparently be mounted externally.
Does anyone have any experience with these heaters and any recommendation as far as brands go? Rinnai is just down the road a couple of miles. My neighbor, who also wants a tankless, owns a heating and air business and we are thinking about seeing if we could get certified to do the Rinnai heaters.
However, I see numerous brands on the Internet and I’d like some feedback before commiting. Are these tankless heaters reliable? As there any installation gotchas? any brands to avoid or to specify?
Thanks,
Dave
Replies
The tank itself might not freeze, but why would the piping to and from be any less vulnerable?
We have a Takagi in our attic and it has some non-freeze capability... I believe it fires the burner automatically to keep itself warm.
Dave:
I just finished up installing a Noritz N-069 tankless mounted on the outside wall of my house in ATL. My plan is to wrap the piping to/from w/ a self-regulating heat cable (about $33 for 6' from McMaster) and depend on the unit's internal heater to protect it. Think this one uses electric heat for freeze protection, rather than the burner. You can also use the old standby of letting a tap drip when it's that cold.
I don't have any run time on it yet to see whether it's issue-less. But (and this is another story) it's been mounted outside since Thanksgiving, and it fired right up once I finished the connections a couple days ago. I was surprised by how quiet it is- I was expecting louder.
The heater was purchased from Ira Wood for ~$1k, which was a good bit less than a comparable Rinnai, since they have fairly tight distribution control where you'd have to buy and pay for installation, too. AGL periodically runs hefty rebates for Rinnai heaters (on the order of $500, w/ only $100 for any other brand), but that doesn't make up the difference to the $1,800-$2k installed price.
We added it as a second heater to supply two bathrooms, since our tank heater is located about as far away from them as you can get. We have a shutoff valve on the hot water line that splits the two sides of the house (bathrooms vs. kitchen/laundry) and we can open it if one of the heaters dies.
Ted