Friday 5 March 2010

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.

7 comments:

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

Hey good for you. Our next water heather is going to be a natural gas fired tankless heater.

A big part of my employer's business is extracting propane (and ethane, butane, and "natural gasoline") from natural gas and selling it to retail outlets (and chemical plants and refineries).

Vagabonde said...

So I did not get that – will you get the rebate? Or you won’t because you did not do the assessment prior to installation? We do depend on hot water but it is a luxury for many people around the world. Actually running water is also a great luxury and we forget it. I remember my cousin’s great grandmother in the country in France. She did not have running water. I thought it was neat to walk with her to the fountain on the square to get water. That was when I was little in France, only 1 hour from Paris!

Cloudia said...

GRRRRR!



(Brrrrr?)



Aloha from Hawaii my Friend!


Comfort Spiral

Takagi tankless water heater said...

I use gas tankless water heater for 1 year for hot water and heating.
My family consists of 4 members. We have two bathrooms and kitchen. Gog choosing tankless water heater is a consultation of experts who offer us gas tankless water heater, which heats 10 gallons of water for 1 min.
Currently, I am very pleased with my tankless water heater. Enough to satisfy all our needs

Lorac said...

I find our government getting away with much these days. I had applied to Second career when laid off and after 6 months and a lot of work to get everything in place that they wanted, they changed the whole criteria for applying. I got a letter in the mail on Dec 24 telling me I no longer qualify. They are still running these adds on TV and they are very misleading! Kudos on the tankless hot water! Sorry about the rebates!

Daniel said...

Hi,

Tankless water heaters also called instantaneous or demand water heaters, provide hot water only as it is needed. This water heaters heat water directly without the use of a storage tank and it provide hot water at a rate of 2–5 gallons per minute. Thanks...

GE Water Heaters

Unknown said...

This is a nice article about update on tankless water heaters. I can share this to my clients so that they will have an idea on what kind of water heater should they get.

Tankless Water Heater Toronto