I’m 99% sure I want to put in a Takagi water heater, because of space considerations in the house. The only thing I’m not sure of is supplying the bathroom sink with hot water from the unit–low flow rate and not much hot water used there anyway. Seems like maybe a very small electric tank under the sink would work. It could store a few gallons of water and the standby loss would be into conditioned space as opposed to out in the garage or in the attic. I know there are also low-capacity electric tankless that might work. The Takagi seems like it should work fine for the shower, laundry machine, and kitchen sink. Anyone else use a setup like this, or have comments?
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It's not uncommon to have a small electric tank installed in a "remote" bathroom, fed from the main hot water pipe. The tank doesn't have much capacity itself, but it delivers instant hot water, and before it's drawn down hot water arrives from the main heater.
The only real problem with this approach is that most small heaters are really crappy. Presumably someone makes some good-quality ones, but you probably won't find them at the big box stores.
Sounds like this would be a good installation for a electric tankless water heater.
I looked into these larger units a while back. The electric units were "affordable" but I needed a whole new electric service. The gas units were outrageously priced. I also could not see a way to hook a circulation system to the tankless heater either.
Try contacting those Controlled Energy people behind the ads in FHB for the Aquastar. They also handle Takagi models. And I've found them to be quite knowledgable about tankless applications in general. I've heard they even have diagrams for hot water heating applications.
They seem very eager to pass out information without the sales pitch.