Decorating & Renovating
kaylie622
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Water heater recs (electric)
Another expense coming down the pike. Anyone love their water heater? I was looking at Marathon brand and would love to know if it's worth the extra $$. Gas is not an option for us.
Re: Water heater recs (electric)
Does your electric company have a rebate on water heaters? I'd check into it.
Ours does and the requirement is they pay for, install and maintain the water heater but they are allowed to maintain the cycle of the water heater for energy efficiency.
We only have an issue (and it's rare) during the summer when it's peak hours and the end of the day and all of the farm is in the shower...we get cold water..but like I said it's happens like twice a summer and by morning it's better. We've also had issues lately but that's because I have 2 extra people staying with us for the past month and a ton of dishes and laundry as a result. I finally figured out how to cycle it all so we don't have that problem. In normal day to day life...I don't even notice it.
I want to say our water heater is a Rheem?! It's been good to us..no problems..but I know they don't have the longest life expentancy which is fine because the electric company's problem not ours...but if I was buying one on my own I can't say I'd suggest it.
Water heaters are extremely simple appliances. They will need to be replaced every 10-12 years...so one of the more frequent appliance replacements. With electric being your only option just go to a plumbing supply store, hardware store, or big box store and buy a high efficient but cheap model. There are basically 3 models of each size water heater. The less efficient (85%) metal body model, the more efficient (95%) metal body model, and the more efficient (95%) fiberglass body model. The fiberglass body will cost 2-3 times the metal body of the same efficiency but all of the guts of the water heater are the same. Those guts will break/not work as well/corrode in the same 10 year time span as the metal body one so if you go with a fiberglass option you'll be doing more tinkering and replacing (either DIY or hire a plumber). The fiberglass body wont' rust out like metal body tanks do but unless you have acidic water the guts will break before the body rusts out. Getting a new body also helps with the large amounts of sediment that build up in the bottom of the tank. With a fiberglass option you'll have to be better at flushing on a regular basis. *Note you should flush your tank every year or two to help avoid sediment and you should replace your anode in the tank once in it's life to get a few more years out of the water heater but few people do either.* Also you should look at adding a whole house filter on your incoming water line to benefit both your water heater and water softener if you have one.
The 95% efficient metal body water heater should be $300 or so depending on the size. Don't spend more than that.
As far as sizing goes keep in mind that electric water heaters are much slower to heat up the water than gas fired water heaters. So be cautious about size recommendations you read online they are often for gas fired heaters. If the size you have now is working for you consider staying with that size. If you never run out of hot water and want to save some energy you may want to consider dropping down one size. Note if you're upgrading or planning to upgrade your DW, washer, faucets, and showerheads to low flow fixtures there is a good chance you might not need as much hot water in the future either.
When we replaced our electric water heater (no natural gas available to us either and with a geothermal system we don't need propane) we downsized from an 80 gallon to a 40 gallon. When we run our high water use DW, take a shower, and hand wash dishes within a short span we run out of hot water. A 60 gallon is what our 3 bath, 2 person home needs. But we downsized on purpose because we're going with low flow bathroom fixtures in two bathrooms and we had a desuperheater added to our geothermal system (aka. we get free hot water all summer from the hot temperatures taken out of our house).
Fox - do you put this stuff in your blog? You totally should. It's like houses for dummies.
So the fancy $800 fiberglass model won't really save me anything in the long run, because I'll still have to have the insides replaced.
Right now we have a 50 gallon and our inspector recommended upgrading a size if it would fit. The folks who owned the house a few owners ago finished the basement around the water heater and it is going to be a royal pain to remove. It's basically in a very tiny closet, though there is an access panel and I really don't think we could go any bigger. We have three baths (two with showers) and I think if the current water heater wasn't 20 years old, that size would probably be fine. I looked into tankless, but it didn't seem to be a good option for electric.
Any thoughts on the heat pump ones? Are all heat pumps geothermal? I promise I tried Googling this on my own, but it's like reading Greek.
I have nowhere near the expertise of Foxin Fiji, but when ours needed to be replaced and was still under our home warranty, I got worried that the warranty company would choose a crappy one. The brand was Bradford White, and from my reading online it is actually a highly recommended brand, but is sold only to installers.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/water-heaters/buying-guide.htm
Well I plan to someday. For the number of times I re-write this stuff on the nest it would be nice to just post a link.
I had to take a little break from blogging to study for my big professional engineering test and then work got really, really busy. Lots of traveling and late nights.
LOL OK I was going to talk about tankless and the hybrid options in my last post but it was getting too long.
Tankless - Never, ever get a tankless electric! They use a massive amount of energy, cost more to run, have a high first cost, and the installation is pricey if not competely unaffordable (depending on your home's electric loads you may need to upgrade your main electrical service). Even NG tankless is questionable on if it saves you money. Depends on if you have a small HW need or not and how sporadic it is. There are no hard and fast rules. The units cost a lot (both the cost of the unit and the installation price) and have a relatively high failure rate...the residential models just aren't there yet but they will be in a few years.
Hybrid - This is new thing that isn't a very proven energy saver either. They work best if your hot water heater is not inside your home like is often the case in warm southern climates when the hot water heaters are often in the garage. They have two parts. One part is an electric resistance coil that is the exact same size as an electric water heater. The other is a heat pump on the top of the unit. Heat pumps = refrigerators with reversing valves. Meaning they can draw heat from the surrounding air to heat up the hot water tank and in return make the air around the HP colder. A true heat pump in replace of a furnace for example can flip flop between the heating and cooling but in this case it would only be used for heating. They use the exact same refrigerant cycle as a home refrigerator or window air conditioner...so imagine you turned the window air conditioner around or flipped a refrigerator inside out and that is how it heats.
So if you put them inside a house they make the surrounding space cold as a result. If it is in an unoccupied space that isn't a big deal comfort wise but either way your furnace will be making up the load to some extent (ie. reheating the air). So that washes out a lot of the energy savings. On top of that the heat pump is only making up a maximum of 30% of the heating load (see temperature ranges below). The electric resistance coil does the rest. If the heat pump is in a cold space the electric coil will do all or most of the heating. There will be no savings what so ever at that time compared to the high efficient electric models. If your water heater is in an interior space that cool because of the cold temperatures the heat pump is putting out or if the water heater is in an exterior space where the winters are cold you get no benefit for 6 months of the year (or however long the cold temperatures are). Domestic hot water temperatures are usually 110-120degF so it doesn't take much for a cool (probably should have used that word instead of cold) surroundings to render the heat pump worthless. No matter what...even in ideal conditions...the heat pump can only do part of the load say from taking the incoming 50 degree water to 70 degrees and then the electric coil has to finish heating from 70 to 120 degrees.
The last time I checked they were around $1200 for a mid sized unit. I did quick ROI cost analysis for someone on here once and it turned out to be a 15-20 year payback. The electric resistance coil will again only last 10 or so years. The hybrid units have a fiberglass tank so they will need similar maintenance as I mentioned above. Also the hybrid models I've seen are very hard to work on. The heat pump is off limits...you can't do any of that yourself because it has refrigerant in it which is dangerous to the environment if it sprung a leak. So the top is fixed and not easy to take apart which greatly limits your access to the electric coil below. What is normally a ridiculously easy DIY fix (replacement electric coils cost $10 at the hardware store and you literally pull them out and plug in new ones like an outlet) is now something you have to call a pro to do. The plumbers I know make a lot of house calls for both hybrid and tankless water heaters. These products that are promoted as being "green" just put more $ in their pockets so they will often recommend them.
What is all boils down to is that hot water heating is the cheapest utility in your house. The average homeowner spends only $200-400 a year heating their hot water. Compared to your furnace and A/C that is nothing. Most washers and electric dryers each cost more to run than your hot water heater. Reducing your hot water load by using low flow fixtures will give you more cost savings than upgrading to an expensive hot water heater.