Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Are Tankless Water Heaters Crap?

We recently had a Rinnai water heater installed at our home--at a cost of $2,600 (considerably more than a conventional water heater). It's a tankless heater, which means that instead of constantly keeping a tank of hot water at the ready, it virtually instantaneously heats water when a request for hot water is made.

The principle is a great one and Marysia is quite familiar with their use in Poland where, as in much of Europe, they are quite common. They conserve one's use of natural gas as the gas only runs on demand. It doesn't needless heat hot water when hot water is not being used. They're so green that they qualify for a $300 tax credit.

It all sounds great, right? So, what's the problem? Well sir, the reason these heaters are possibly crap is their minimum water-flow rate. ...

To read the remainder of this post and the 17 annoyed comments made on it, please go to the new location for the Crappy Software blog:

http://crappysoftware.tvcrit.com/?p=52