re: Pro's and Con's of installing a tankless water heater in attic

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If you replace your tank heater with a tankless heater, there is no difference to speak of in delivery time

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This is correct.

I just replaced my 50gal Tank water heater with an electric tankless because my tank was leaking.

I was considering upgrading to an 80gal or possibly buying 2 40 or 50 gallon because with a household of 6 people we sometimes ran out of hot water.

When I compared the cost of an 80gal or 2x 50gal the Electric Tankless made more sense. There was some upgrade costs for my electrical connections because the Unit I purchased required 2x 2P 50A breakers. I am an electrician so I did that work myself.

The unit runs a tad colder than my old tank heater. The water temp was 118° on my old tank setting. I have to run the tankless on 120° to get close to the same output.

I did add a drain pan under the unit and plumbed that into the drain from the old tank heater.

I have not serviced the unit yet to determine any pain in the arse associated with that.

So far I REALLY like the change. Never run out of hot water now. I haven't noticed any changes in my electric bill.

You got the amp service to handle it

I've got 2 that are plumbed in series, they operate as master/slave and provide unlimited hot water. Doesn't matter how many guests are here or what my wife is doing, I can take a hot shower for as long as I like.

The only factor that tends to be an issue is that a normal tank heater is about 50k BTU, for comparison a 5 ton a/c would have a 120k BTU furnace.

My tankless heaters are 200k BTU each. So with a 3ton A/C up and 5 ton A/C down my two heaters are 200k combined and the water heaters are 400k combined. The gas line in my attic is huge, most of the time the gas service in the attic won't be big enough to handle 4x the BTU requirement.

Con is if you don’t vent it properly it could shut off in the middle of the shower and your wet frigid naked arse has to climb up to the attic to reset it.....


Or so I’ve heard ...

Saw this thread.. when it works, its great. When it doesnt. It sucks, hard to find anyonr to work on them. Hard to find parts..i say this as someone with mine in the attic sitting here with it currently broke. 3rd time in 14 yrs. This is 2nd one, and about to have to buy another tomo

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Hurricane Zeta hit last year, power out for a day or so. Could still cook on gas cooktop, and never ran out of hot water from gas water heater tank.

Seems like if you lose power with tankless, you're out of luck.

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I have two small UPS systems for my computers. Last time we lost power I just plugged the tankless gas water heaters into the UPS. It only uses power to run a small circuit board to manage the unit and an igniter. A $100 UPS had enough power to run the thing for hours.

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I just don’t understand a water heater having to be in an attic. Any leaks and one is screwed.

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1. We don’t have basements here so they go in the attic to save space. You can put them on the main level if you want. But you lose that space.

2. There is a drain pain if a leak develops.

3. New constitution with pex will have plumbing in the attic anyway.

We had 2 in the attic with no issues.

You guys have me wanting to get a tankless. I didn't even know you could stick them outside. The side of my house that isn't seen is conveniently where the gas and the main water line comes in.