New Area Gas Utilities
 

I would love to hear from any residents who purchased a new home with gas utilities how the instant water heater serves them as well as if they find the gas utilities economical. Thanks in advance.

I think the on demand water heater is great. Takes a bit for the water to get “hot”, but not much longer than having a typical 40/50 gal water heater on the opposite side of the house or in a basement. Our gas bill has been running in the upper $20’s. I golf and take care of the lawn, so lots of showers and laundry.

The time to get hot water to you sink will be a little longer with tankless than with a regular tank system. Remember you are starting with cold water that has to be heated before being sent into the pipe. Reg HW heater starts with hot water.

If you want hot water when you turn on the water at the sink you need a circulating pump and a regular hot water system.

I think the instant hot water just saves you the cost of maintaining 40 gallons of hot water. But you will still have to pay for the gas to go from cold water to hot with either system.

I would go with a tank system and a circulating pump on a timer.

We have the tankless system, yes it takes some time to get hot water. It is nice to be running a dishwasher, washing machine, etc with no drop off in quantity while your tank refreshes.

Homes in Southern Oaks(Fenney, DeSoto, McClure, Linden, Marsh Bend, Monarch Grove) are all equipped with the tankless water heaters. We designed and built and don’t recall that we could choose a tank versus tankless water heater. This would be a question for your designer if you build. If buying an existing home you will get a tankless system.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Our home in Atlanta Ga. came with two 50 gallon traditional natural gas hot water tanks. I insulated both to R38. When it came time to replace the tanks I choose a "tankless" unit. Unit was large enough to satisfy the needs of a 5 bedroom, 4 full bath home. Cost of unit and installation was twice as much as just replacing the traditional tanks. The tankless reduced the natural gas bill by $30/per month averaged over 10 years. We were happy with the tankless. We did install a hot water pump at the farthest point from the tankless unit that would run on demand and stop when hot water reached that point. I would question the location of the tankless unit on the homes in the Villages. It seems to me the location was chosen to minimize the installation cost. I'd recommend either a second unit for the back of the house or installing a pump to move hot water. The standard recirculating pump will void the tankless warranty, but a pump that bridges the hot/cold water line and stops running when hot water reaches it is ok. I bought mine on Amazon for $400 and installed it myself.

The tankless water heater in our house in Monarch Grove seems to have been installed in a location close to the main appliances, not the bathrooms, which actually makes sense. However, i would still advise running a hot water tap to get the water hot before running the dishwasher or washing machine to ensure hot water will be delivered to them when they fill.

As for the shower/tub, just turn on the hot water before you get undressed. It takes 1-2 minutes for hot water to reach them, but is not an issue once you get used to the routine.

You will use a bit more water with a tankless heater but you will no longer be keeping a large tank of water hot all of time. Overall you will see a significant savings.

Not sure about you using a bit more water. Our reg hot water tank in our 9 year old Lilly is in the garage and our master bath is the farthest away. I start running the hot water for a good 3 minutes before it’s warm enough to jump in.
So you are saving by not reheating water with the tankless, plus you get natural gas while I am electric, so I have no idea how much it really costs to heat water. But I am banking you are less$$

I have to say our gas bill is not nearly as low as yours but I'm not going to trade in our gas 50 gal water heater. Our full hot water is very quick to our master bedroom and nearly instant to our laundry room which is the closest to the the hot water heater. Our kitchen and the hall bath which are midway and at the end of the plumbing line are connected to a Watts circulation pump attached to the water heater. Instant warm water from those two locations and full hot water in less than 5-10 seconds. We have the pump on a timer so it doesn't work during the night.

If it isn't possible to attach a Watts hot water circulation pump to the ON DEMAND hot water system, then I'm out. I've been through the waiting for hot water in our NJ home. We had a gas hot water heater there but I didn't know about the Watts hot water circulation pump. If I had known about it, we would have had it installed for out master bath and hall bathroom. Too much time wasted waiting for hot water.

I did that for 16 years in our NJ home. I never got used to that routine. Seemed like such a waste of water too. And no......I didn't collect the water to use for watering the plants.

Thanks for all of the responses. Seems that they are economical, but don't provide instant hot at the demand point in the home. That's OK. I was not at all familiar with these and your input was valuable.

The only problem I have with our tankless hot heater is the maintenance. The manufacturer recommends you flush it once a year. The plumber charged us $150 for the flush.

We had a recirculating pump installed on our old house and it was wonderful! These are usually only put in large facilities like hotels. But, we had an old house and the hot water heater was on the other side of the house and in the winter it took forever to get hot water to our bedroom.

I don't know of anyone ever flushing their hot water heater over the last 2-1/2 years we've been here, at least it never came up in conversation. We have a whole house Nova filter system and softener ahead of the water heater which might eliminate the need for flushing. We don't mind the short wait for the hot water as it is far out weighed by having a gas dryer and stove. There is one more benefit, you free up the space that the large hot water tank would take up in the garage, space which we all need. In the early stages of development down here they continued to build the HVAC closet the same size as when there was a hot water tank in there and without the tank that space became a very nice sized closet in the garage, I put wire shelves in ours and store all kinds of stuff in there, nothing toxic or flammable though, mostly shovels, rakes, garden tools, etc. The homes are also wired for 220 incase you don't want gas appliances.