Tank or Tankless Hot Water Heater

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If you run out of hot water go tankless. If you don’t go tank.

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pretty much this. Or if have multiple tanks and all need replacing making a single tankless more economical. Though usually multi-tank homes usually have them scattered around the house closer to where the hot water is needed.

Tankless has become a status symbol like a standby generator. Something for suburban dads to casually mention they have one at the crawfish boil.

For me, tank.

Cheap, simple, zero maintenance.

we are fixing to renovate and swap the house over to propane so I am replacing the electric tanks with on demand tankless…one small one for eah of the two bathrooms and a larger one for the kitchen/laundry.

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Cheap, simple, zero maintenance.

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Yeah right. I drain and flush mine annually and check the annode. I also have it on a whole-house size water filter, I'll get a picture of what that filter catches and certainly don't want that crud for washing anything in.

My Tank just crapped out and it was cheaper to go with Tankless as Tanks have gotten really expensive. I already had NG in place so it was a simple swap, did it myself.

After going from an electric tank to a gas tankless, I would go with two 50 gallon gas tank water heaters if I could do a do over.

Then again it could be my personal experience. It hasn’t operated perfectly since we got it. The plumber who installed it can’t seem to figure out why. I haven’t given up hope that this thing can perform better, but it doesn’t seem like it. It doesn’t meet our needs as a family of 4. 10 GPM unit can’t run many fixtures at one time. Even in the summer.


ETA: I've posted this in the past I believe, but there's a difference in the two that I've observed that should be noted. Tankless is better suited for never ending hot water, such as for bathrooms, and tank is better suited for quick spurts of hot water, such as the kitchen. The time it takes to ignite and warm up for a tankless can be a bit of a pain for quick kitchen uses, where a tank having hot water ready and immediately flowing in to the line when called for is better for that scenario. My tankless also has a minimum ignition flow rate of .5GPM, and a minimum constant flow rate of .4 GPM to stay running. This isn't a problem for my wife who takes hot baths and showers, but I take barely warm showers, and when I approach that minimum my tankless constantly cycles on and off. With a tank that wouldn't happen. In an ideal world, not considering the issues I've had with my tankless, I'd go tankless for the bathrooms, placed on that side of the house, and a smaller 30 gallon tank for my kitchen and laundry / utility, closer to that side of the house.

Tankless. No real downside. I’m going on 6 years using one unit instead of 2 50 gal tanks and wouldn’t go back. The one downside I have ever seen is power loss if you don’t have a generator to power it.

I’ve serviced it one in 6 years with just a flush since the plumber was here doing something else.

Cost for 2 50 gal replacement for 1 tankless was virtually the same.

Tankless is the only kind I want in my house now.

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Electric water heaters, tankless or not, are power hogs. Be prepared to get a whole-home unit or a larger generator if you want to use it during an outage.

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fyi, In a bind, I've hooked my electric tank up to 120v on my generator and it worked. I don't remember the amp draw but it wasn't a big generator. Seems like when I looked up info on it after the fact, a website said running 120 on a 240 water heater would use 1/4th of the power and thus take 4x as long to heat the water. Not sure why it wouldn't be 1/2 but I had hot water during the Great Freeze and DGAF about how I got it.

I had a tankless electric and you're SOL if needed hot water on anything but a large generator. iirc it was a small one and it drew around 50amps. Goes to show just how much energy is needed to heat water.