Scott, I don't own a tankless yet, but probably will before the year is out.
These are on-demand heaters. Technically, you can't run out of hot water. Once they come up to temp, which they do pretty quickly, they will keep supplying water at that temp until you run out of gas. *GRIN* The caveat is capacity though. If you get a smaller unit and try to run say two showers, you may be drawing water through the system faster than it can heat it fully, so you will get water that isn't at it's max temp coming out of each shower, however, you could shower all day and still get that same lower temp water. You can get larger units that can handle high enough flows to supply two showers, or a shower and washing machine. They can save money because of two reasons. First, a hot water tank keeps water hot all the time. So, even while you are out at work all day, your hot water tank has to come on once in a while to compensate for the heat loss from the tank to the surroundings. Granted, a lot of insolation around the tank can help here. The tankless just heats water when you need it. Secondly, since the tankless can supply hot water indefinitely, you don't need to heat the water quite as hot as you do with a hot water tank. For example, with a hot water tank, when you take a shower, you mix some cold with some hot so you don't drain all the hot water from the tank as quickly. With a tankless, you can set the temp lower and use less cold water in the mix without fear of running out of hot water. Some of the units do not have a standing pilot so that also saves some money there. The units can be expensive. A smallish unit with a standing pilot I have seen for about 500 bucks, and without a pilot for about a grand. that's what I know at this point in time. Hope that helped. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 To listen to the show archives go to link http://acbradio.org/handyman.html or ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday The Pod Cast address for the Cooking In The Dark Show is. http://www.gcast.com/u/cookingindark/main.xml Visit The Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From Various List Members At The Following address: http://www.jaws-users.com/handyman/ Visit the new archives page at the following address http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man list just send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
