Tankless water heater update

Picture this...for a week your hot water was tepid, hubby notices (long showers?). You do research on tankless water heaters, phone a company, get a quote= $3300, to remove the old, rusty hot water tank and put in a propane tankless water heater. It is wonderful. I love it. I am VERY conscious about using hot water!

You feel good about this.
In a week, the Bracebridge company has the new tank. You go another week with NO HOT WATER. You know, with Haiti's and Chile's earthquakes, that you cannot complain. You don't. Washing your hair in cold water, from the tap, having sponge baths from heated kettle water, for many is a luxury.

In two weeks, you have a date of installment, they arrive with the tank, you have a heckuva time as they realize that the propane tanks leaked, and had to be replaced.

You see, propane tankless heated water is more efficient than electric heated water. You have propane onsite, for the new furnace you put in the weekend your mother was dying. You saved the environment, spending thousands of dollars, but this is before the new program, for which we didn't qualify as it predates this program (May 12, 2006 - Mother's Day weekend!)

It makes sense to install this new heater for us. It takes up less space, it is more efficient. With only one bedroom upstairs most of the water is heated and piped to the main floor from the basement, meaning you are not running heated water, except for morning ablutions, to the distant 2nd floor.

Oh, says Ottawa Green Party Candidate (S-I-L), you can get money back from the government for installing this efficient system. After phoning the company in Orillia (the closest to us in Muskoka) that does this Energy Assessment, they explained that they will charge us $349, plus GST 14 %, to do the assessment. Fortunately, they do not charge mileage, like all the other contractors in Muskoka! Orillia is an hour away.

The government rebate for this is $150,  therefore of the $390 assessment, - 150 = $240, have to have the  inspection done. We will get back $325 from the prov, plus, $325 from the Federal government.

The catch: even, with a former business manager husband to interpret the detail on the government website, you realize, after phoning the 10 places that do this Preinstallment Survey, that you needed to have the survey done before you had the tank installed. Two weeks without hot water, maybe it could have been done if we'd known. But we only knew that we needed a new tank, toute de suite. So no Ontario or Federal rebate.