this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
11 points (92.3% liked)
Home Improvement
9276 readers
32 users here now
Home Improvement
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In that case, I would assume they’re talking about how cold the incoming water would be.
I used a tankless in a zone five area where our incoming water in the winter was often below 60 degrees. You’ll have to compare the charts of input temp and output GPH to determine how it would work for your specific use case.
I used an indoor mounted one, but there are tankless models intended for places like CA and AZ where they can be mounted outside.
We liked the endless hot water - we only had one bath and three people, so we offer were bumping against the 60 gallons of our old tank model.
Our biggest issue is that we have a huge hot water heater that takes up a whole closet. We like to down size. An indoor one would be fine. What are zones?
You should spend some time reading the literature of tankless heaters - the child post below explains it. Tankess heaters can only raise temp at certain flows. So, if your incoming water is ~55 degrees, it might be able to heat to 110 degrees and flow 6.6 GPH - basically one shower. In that scenario if someone turned on the hot water for.. say... dishes, the tankless can't keep up with demand and the overall output will be colder. Probably not cold but it might not be what you wanted.
The more expensive you go, the more the tankeless can do concurrently, but the more sacrifices you'll make: they'll be physically larger, they might require a bigger gas line, etc.