Instant hot water heaters

panthercity wrote:
I tried explaining 'Navy Shower' to my wife. Not only did she not know anything about it, she doesn't want to know anything about it. She loves her long showers...

Well never ran out with DW taking Non Navy shower, with a 6 gal tank and now we have a 10 gal tank.

I tried explaining 'Navy Shower' to my wife. Not only did she not know anything about it, she doesn't want to know anything about it. She loves her long showers...

The major differences between the "instant" or "Tankless" and the standard 6 or 10 gallon can are as follows. Aqua Hot and it's competitor are NOT this type of heater.. So this (for the most part) does not apply to them.

The "Instant" jobs do not store hot water. Thy only "Burn" when water is flowing. So at VERY LOW flow rates.. May not kick in.

At more normal rates they work very well.

They only burn fuel, Propane or Diesel) not electricity. Now I do not pay for kilowatt hours.. But I do pay for gallons.

Second: They can USUALLY (-10 perhaps not) heat water faster than you can draw it,, Thus you never run out of hot unless you run out of fuel (Also applies to Aqua Hot and it's competitor).

Next, When it's below frigid out Like 11(f)) I let my heater run all night, all liquid in the AM. no problem. Not sure how that would work with the instant jobs (Does not apply to AquaHot).


I think the best of all worlds would be as follows.

A standard heater for the kitchen and lav's
An "Instant on" for the shower
and a very very low flow circulating pump to keep the hot line to the shower... HOT. (Well warm in cold weather).. not fast enough to fire the burner (Or a manual cut off switch on the burner) but fast enough to prevent freezing.

Thanks all for the feedback. Not doin' anything anytime soon, just looking at options when it comes time to replace our 6-year-old, 6-gallon propane water heater.

Instant hot water from a 120 volt heater is pretty much inadequate for showering… you may have warm water but almost no pressure… the water temps are determined by the reduction of the flow rate…
I much prefer my RV hot water tank using electric as the heat source… the recovery good for taking navy showers…

I will reserve comment on the Aqua Hot, but it seems to be a furnace with a water heating component to it…

We have an AquaHot and it runs on diesel. Works great!

Posted By: Steve S on 02/09/14 08:45am

Ron what water heater do you have?

I'm not sure, I'd have to go out and look. If you're really interested, I will.

Altern wrote:

lanerd wrote:
Ours is not "instant", but it is "endless" and we love it. We can shower as long as we want (if the gray tank drain is open).

Ron

X2 ...And, as long as the diesel tank isn't too low.

Not sure what diesel has to do with it, I'm pretty sure our heater uses propane....so yeah, change to: "as long as the propane holds out"

Ron

lanerd wrote:
Ours is not "instant", but it is "endless" and we love it. We can shower as long as we want (if the gray tank drain is open).

Ron

X2 ...And, as long as the diesel tank isn't too low.

We have one in our new TH. Seems like a nice feature and only used it on one trip but I have to say that in the 12 years of owning our old TT with a standard one we never ran out of hot water by taking a "Navy shower". We dry camp 99% of the time but if we were on shore power it would be nice to just let it run!

lanerd wrote:
Ours is not "instant", but it is "endless" and we love it. We can shower as long as we want (if the gray tank drain is open).

Ron

Ron what water heater do you have?