Wow!!! The Fantasy had THE RIDE last night!!!

We're very far afield now, but we have a tankless water heater in our Florida home. The only downside of it is that it takes longer than usual (when using a normal hot water tank) initially to get the hot water to the tap. You're wasting a lot of water every time you turn it on (after not being in use for a while). I like it a lot, but always get a little impatient waiting for the hot water to arrive.

It depends on the brand. Bosch has a line that requires no electricity at all.
http://www.cpotanklesswaterheaters....,pd.html?start=1&cgid=bosch-tankless-aquastar

I would look and see if it is adjusted correctly. I put an tanklless electric one in my mothers house when I rebuilt it and it had a very fast response time. It took maybe 5-10 seconds for hot water to come out of the farthest tap away from the unit which was faster than the previous water heater.

Lag on a tankless comes from two sources.

The water in the pipes between the unit and point of use. - There is not much you can do about that, aside from moving the unit, or purchasing point of use units.

The amount of water that flows through the unit before the heating element gets fired up. You can adjust that, and different units do have different response rates. You can also mitigate it a bit by not opening the hot faucet full blast initially.



My idea solution is to take out our existing gas fired boiler (hydronic heat) and replace it with a condensing unit and run a priority zone off of that into a hot water holding tank. The payback is not really there, the current boiler is 80% efficent, so to go to a +/- 93% efficent unit would not pay that well. There are other issues to consider though. I have a split level with no basement. My boiler and water heater on in the middle of the first floor of the house - in the laundry room. With a gas furnace, gas clothes dryer, and gas water heater I worry about make-up air. There is a also a fireplace on this floor, adding to the combustion mix. A condensing unit would solve the problem of make-up air nicely and I could route the exhaust and supply up the chimney. However if I go with a seperate tankless unit and do not replace the boiler, then I need to think about where to route the exhaust and intake. Unfortunately there are no other good options from where the untility room is currently located. I would have no trouble tying a traditional gas water heater into the existing chimeny. I just put a liner in, and when I bought the liner I purposely made sure that what I was buying could handle the combined BTu's of both my existing gas boiler and a new gas water heater.

I would also love a condensing unit and a small tank because that would free up a lot of space in the laundry room, and I could then fit a water softner in there (yeah, the city water service also comes up through the middle of the slab - I wonder who's bright idea that was)


Clearly what I need to do is win the lottery and then I can rip it all out and start fresh.

-dave

I looked at the Bosch

• IMPORTANT: Model AQ4 power vent is required for horizontal venting

That eliminates the "no electric" requirement in most retrofit installations.

In reality, power to do things like open the gas valve, ignite the gas, power a control board, open a damper, etc is not a problem. I think my furnace draws about 2 amps to operate, and I assume a tankless water heater is even less. Any decent generator could handle that. The problem is with an electric water heater - the amount of power you need to operate the heating elements puts a huge load on most generators. My water heater takes 4,500 watts at 240 volts. That's a big portion of what most portable generators put out.


-dave

Yep. Lots of calls after Katrina for stolen generators....then deaths because people were running them in their garages... We kept ours on our back patio then pulled cars up to the side so the only way to take off with one they'd have to lift it up and over a car. Not happening quickly or easily. Lol! Mostly it was bein in transit with the hundred gallons of gas that was most risky. Still, we always kept the guns near. You just never know how desperate or crazy people will get. Living out in the country like we did wasn't so bad, tho. Everyone in our tight little neighborhood really watched out for each other.

We are huuuuge proponents for the tankless hot water. With teenage boys its brutal to not have the hot water on demand. Yep, the brains are electric but I'll deal with that. Since Katrina my father-in-law who's an engineer/Macgiver has equipped us with the things we need to safely back feed the house as needed. We're ready!

The Coast Guard guys who rented out the house from us told us to come back there if a storm comes. They'll have to go work and welcome the house keep. Still need to get the hardware for the storm panels mounted on the house. Prob'ly going to find a contractor to handle that after the first of the year. In hurricane season they charge a lot more! LOL!

One last comment before this thread drifts wayyyy off topic. My borther told of a guy in his town that had his generator stolen. He had it running in the middle of the night. The theives took the guys lawnmower out of the shed, started that so it would sound like an engine running, and then turned off and took the generator. Crazy


-dave

Wow. Industrious thieves!

Just to bump this thread up instead of starting a new one; I would guess by now some folks have used their 25% off and I have a question.

We were looking at cashing our 25% in next year and I know the discount will only be good for my wife and me for the same 3-day itinerary, but we wanted to take the boy. Could we add him to the stateroom at full price or is it a closed deal and only my wife and I can go for that trip?

I would think that you could add him, depending on availability.

If you have a membership to the whiners on facebook that acted like Disney took them straight into the maw, you might find the answer there. For all of their talk it seems like all of those people who claimed that they would never sail with Disney again are doing nothing but booking new cruises with the discount they got.

Yuck...no thanks...

This in the description of the group made me fear for humanity:

If you need to "process [your] experience and the aftermath" your life is too comfy. What aftermath? We got off the boat and went home.

Does it seriously say that there?? Bwahaha! Wow, some people need to get life into perspective

I think I love you.

The majority of the group rank right up there with ambulance chasing lawyers. They were looking for a payday. It is just funny to see how they are all re-booking on the DCL.