That paragraph just got me all excited and worked up but now I am grounded again, thinking about our tankless hot water heater. Think of a tankless hot water heater as a giant insta-hot for your house. Instead of keeping water heated all day long, these just heat the water when you want it. They use a lot of electricity when you turn on the hot water, but overall you end up using much less electricity than a standard hot water tank. They are considered to be very eco-friendly and as a bonus they take up about as much room as an extra large shoebox.The only problem is, they are fairly new to the market and have only been on people's radar in the U.S. for the past 5 years or so. The models out there are not always perfect and hardly any plumbers have worked on them and the parts are not easily available.
So, yesterday when the hot water in my shower started to get very cold very fast, I knew I was in for an ordeal. We've had our Bosch tankless AE-125 for about 20 months and after doing some quick reading online, it seems like you hit the 18 month mark with these babies and parts start to fail. But I am not giving up on our tankless yet. I love the space saved in our laundry room. After a few calls and a few "We don't carry the parts or work on tankless water heaters we haven't installed" I finally found a plumbing company that said "No problem! We'll be out in 3 hours." So now I am waiting for the guy to show up. I'll let you know how it goes. Luckily, we have friends and family that all live 2 miles or less from us, so we'll be able to take showers this weekend if it gets ugly.
wow! A marathon...that's wonderful. I hope the plumber showed up!
ReplyDeleteOur shower is yours whenever you need it. We've had our tankless (gas) for 4 years. Wonder if it's on it's last legs???
ReplyDeleteAs a plumber who works on these units, I can tell you that electric tankless is rare in these parts, due to cooler water temps coming from the ground. The electric ones just don't have the capacity to make most people happy. But I've worked on lots of gas ones, and you should expect to get 20 - 30 years out of it, depending on who made it.
ReplyDeleteOurs is electric and even during the really really cold snap it was doing fine since there are only two of us, only one bathroom, no kids and I don't do dishes the same time as I take a shower. It looks like there is some regular flushing out that I was never told to do by our original installer that might have added to the parts going bad so quickly. But we still don't know as the plumber came late Friday and couldn't get ahold of Bosch. So fingers crossed for monday that it can get all worked out.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with your marathon training! And I hope you find you can have lovely hot showers when you finish your runs, too.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, when it comes to those Bosch electric heaters, I recommend that rather than pay to have it worked on, you just go to Lowe's and buy a replacement. It ends up being near the same cost.
ReplyDeleteWe are buying a replacement and I am trying to send our old one back in to be refurbished so we can have it as a back up. We will only do tankless again in another house if we have gas and order a Rinnai. We have 2 friends with the Rinnai and no problems. Lesson learned!
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