Need Hot Water

Ted Keane

I'm a plumber in Park City,Utah and I have a customer that owns a bar in town.He has a 40 gallon electric water heater for his hot water.He runs out of hot water alot,and his electric bills for it are high,so he wants to put something more efficient in.The heater is next to 2 high efficency furnaces,and there is no room to put anthing else in.He has no chimney,so I can't go with a gas fired water heater.I was thinking about a point of use water heater,but I don't know if it will be enough,and if it will be cheaper.I was going to put it in place of the 40 gallon water heater.Does anyone know if this will be enough hot water,and if it will be cheaper?Also the water here is really bad with minerals,and I am worried that it will clog up a point of use water heater.Any ideas?

Larry Weingarten

options

Hello: How about a direct vent gas heater? Second choice (because of noise and more complexity) would be a power vent heater...
I don't know if it is still made, but Bradford white used to sell a heater called the Seahorse, which was a small gas fired unit that mounted at an outside wall and was piped to the storage tank.

Jack_21

Rinnai

Is he doing a dishwasher on the system and if so is it a 140F or 180F app. Go to www.rinnai.us and look into the specs. Wall hung, DV, beau-coup HW...but I need a bit more info to advise you further. What fixtures are being supplied and what temps.

Ted Keane

There is no room for an indirect fired water heater.The only room that I have is where a 40 gallon water heater is.He is using his old dishwasher.I don't have any room for a wall hung heater either.This is not a remodel of the bar,he only wants to change his water heater to get more water.And the 40 gallon heater that is in there now is squeezed in there tight.I can't even get any vents to the outside for a power vent.

Ray Landry

put on a thermostatic mixing valve to throttle your water temp down to whatever your code states ( here it's 130).... this way your water in your tank can be 180, instead of lets say 130... you'll be able to keep up with your customers demand better this way. You can probably even keep the old hwh. also, the hotter water will take care of any legonalla desease that builds up in water tanks when they're below 130. Just make sure it's a pressure balancing mix vavle, like a honeywell sparco mix.

Ray Landry

put on a thermostatic mixing valve to throttle your water temp down to whatever your code states ( here it's 130).... this way your water in your tank can be 180, instead of lets say 130... you'll be able to keep up with your customers demand better this way. You can probably even keep the old hwh. also, the hotter water will take care of any legonalla desease that builds up in water tanks when they're below 130. Just make sure it's a pressure balancing mix vavle, like a honeywell sparco mix.

Nron_9

Rinni also make an outside mounted unit that you could pipe to the exsisting tank and have larger amounts of hot water without major changes to the mecanical room