It's been pretty slow on Manny's message board, so one takes what one can get; I figured the gimme crowd's "take" on a common household appliance might, or might not, be of interest.
https://jackpineradicals.com/groups/diy-home-improvement/forum/topic/water-heater-recommendations/OCMI (1870 posts) April 29, 2018 at 8:02 pm
Water Heater Recommendations?
The last time we replaced our water heater in 2000, we could afford professional advice and installation. This time, not so much, so I’m hoping someone here can offer suggestions.
I’ve read that the units available at Home Depot or Lowes are not of the same quality as those available only to plumbers. My husband works for a home improvement contractor. They don’t do water heater installation, but we’re hoping that the owner can leverage his contractor status to get one of the local wholesale suppliers to allow him to purchase from them.
We have very hard water in this area with a lot of iron content, and so use a water conditioner. We want something very low maintenance and with low operational costs, which seems to leave out any tankless options. We don’t want wi-fi access to any of our appliances, nor anything that requires constant electrical supply such as something with powered vents or water circulating mechanisms. The connection is in the basement, so the weight of the water heater is a consideration that precludes stone linings.
Thank you in advance to anyone who has hints, tips or suggestions!
ZimInSeattle (2166 posts) (Reply to original post) April 29, 2018 at 8:13 pm
1. I replaced our natural gas water heater with GE Geospring heat pump water heater. More expensive up front, but far lower operating costs especially in heat pump only mode. 550 Watts vs. 8000 for regular electric hot water heater.
spud demon (1188 posts) (Reply to ZimInSeattle - post #1) April 29, 2018 at 9:38 pm
2. I'm doing the math on this, and it works out.
It’s like the LED light bulbs. My new house came with incandescent ceiling lights, and I calculated how much less LED light would cost — turns out the LED bulbs paid for themselves in the first 2 years. I recycled 100+ “perfectly good” incandescent bulbs immediately.
An electric water heater which costs $419/year can be replaced by a hybrid which costs $110/year to run. The heater costs $1200, and I guess $200-300 installation for those who don’t do their own, it will pay for itself in 4-5 years, and the (Rheem) warranty is 10 years.
Everybody who has an electric water heater, and a lot who have gas/oil but available electricity should switch to hybrid water heaters now.
Enthusiast (12722 posts) (Reply to original post) April 30, 2018 at 1:55 am
3. Our water heater acted a bit weak recently.
We asked about a replacement where we bought the current water heater. The guy said they only install them now as a sort of customer service and suggested I get a plumber to install it. Anyway, they checked their records and we find the old one is like 25 years old. He suggested we turn it all the way up, which we did, and that appears to have solved the immediate problem.
Cassiopeia (3135 posts) (Reply to original post) April 30, 2018 at 4:56 am
4. I wouldn't rule out using a circulation unit.
We just added one to our household. It’s set up with a timer and only operates at our personal peak use times for hot water, about 3 hours in the morning.
Before the circulator we always had one person lose hot water before the end of their shower. We also wasted a LOT of water waiting for those showers to heat up. Now we never run out and we have hot water in seconds.
xloadiex (432 posts) (Reply to original post) April 30, 2018 at 7:32 am
5. We have replaced two of them in the 35 years we’ve been in our home. The last one is a 40 gallon Rheem. No bells and whistles. HD wanted almost as much to install as the cost of the water heater itself. Fortunately I’m pretty handy and did the installation myself. It’s not difficult at all if you are in an area allowed to use flexible connections. All I needed was my husband and sons to carry it down to the basement and I did the rest.
Someone told us many plumbers use a cheaper brand called Bradford and White because they can get the best mark up on them.
Well now, it seems to me the cultists following the hoary old white-haired sourassed sourpuss crank from Vermont and his thieving wife are ignoring the socialist solution for hot water.
When I was wandering around the recently-fallen-apart Soviet Union circa twenty-five years ago, I wondered why the water was either room temperature or mildly lukewarm.
It was because the socialists had centralized the production of hot water--really--where the water was boiled at a plant, and sent by lengthy pipeage to the individual flats.....meaning pretty much that by the time it got to the end of the line, or up to the thirteenth floor, it was room temperature again.
Centralized production of hot water; surely Manny's primitives would go for that. It's what socialism's all about.
