Out of curiosity, I looked at some specs. Essentially, you need to consider how many gallons per minute you will need and how much temperature rise will be required. The temperature rise is basically a function of location. For The Villages, if you want to be able to support 2 simultaneous showers you will probably need 3 40-amp breakers (120 amps) and the appropriate gauge wire run to the location of the tankless heater. An existing tank electric water heater is probably on a 30 amp circuit. It is possible that a typical 200 amp service will not support this with everything else in the house, in which case you would need to upgrade the breaker panel to support more amps.
I went through this previously when having a custom home built. Granted it was some time ago but I don't think things have changed all that much. My builder had put in several electric tankless water heaters and wound up replacing them with tank electric water heaters because the home owners were unhappy with the electric tankless. He had installed numerous gas tankless water heaters with good results. He was more than happy to put in a tankless electric but recommended against it. Where we were building, gas was not available and I wasn't going to install propane tanks. He did mention that it was lower cost to install the electric tankless during the construction of the house rather than try to retrofit the needed 100+ amps of wiring later on.
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Originally Posted by jrref
Electric tankless are not that good. Also, the existing electric supply to your electric tank hot water heater is not large enough to install a tankless so you will need an electrician to install a larger wire and breaker in your electrical panel. Not a big deal but that has to be done.
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