Recently purchased a new to us 5th wheel TH. All of the research I did prior to purchase showed a 12 gal water heater. Coming from a 10 gal in previous rig, I was looking forward to a bigger tank. Unfortunately, I didn't check it in person before the purchase, and now after our first trip in the new rig realized that we have a 6 gal heater. What, are my best options to upgrade? I've read negative reviews on the tankless systems, but that would seemingly be a good option.Please don't go into how I should be using less water, etc. We are a family of 6, so we are going to use water, that's just a fact. And wifey's not real happy right now, so I gotta do something to fix that!

What did you pay for....what does the sales contract and build sheet say about the rig you paid for?If you were suppose to get a 12 gal. tank and got a 6 gal one, then push on the dealer to make it right....No different than paying for slide toppers and not getting them.

Run it on propane and Elec at the same time for faster recovery. Might help a little.

Depending on brand it should be fairly easy to swap to a 10G heater. Gas, electric and two water lines. Might require some modificstions, but nothing a compentend weekender could not do.

donn0128 wrote:Depending on brand it should be fairly easy to swap to a 10G heater. Gas, electric and two water lines. Might require some modificstions, but nothing a compentend weekender could not do.Quite a bit different in size, but as you say a weekend job, Just make sure it's a long one. Lol

downtheroad wrote:What did you pay for....what does the sales contract and build sheet say about the rig you paid for?If you were suppose to get a 12 gal. tank and got a 6 gal one, then push on the dealer to make it right....No different than paying for slide toppers and not getting them.The rig is a 2012 I bought used through a private sale. My fault for not making sure beforehand, but not something I can go back and make a big deal about with the seller.

Options to upgrade water heater? | Good Sam Community

dougrainer
Nomad
Mar 02, 2017
Robert6401 wrote:
I'm pretty sure I had burned out the electric heating element because I turned it on with the tank empty by accident for a little while this past weekend, so I replaced it. But, I am curious about the size difference. You can see the two different elements in the picture. It fit fine, so I installed it and tested it out and it seemed to work fine, but do I need to be concerned about the size difference? Hopefully by using both electric and gas at the same time, we will be able to reduce recovery time enough that it won't be as much of an issue when we go camping this weekend.

WHERE did you get the replacement? Non RV 120 elements are longer. Both Atwood and Suburban state you can run the 120 elements up to 20 minutes dry with no damage. Doug
blofgren
Explorer
Mar 02, 2017
We have the 10 gallon Atwood XT water heater in our fiver and it is great. We can do dishes and then have leisurely showers back to back and not run out of hot water. We can actually shower much like we do at home and not have to have the "soap with water off" military type shower like one needs to with a 6 gallon tank. And this is using electric only. Our last fiver had the 10 gallon Atwood standard (non XT) water heater and the difference is noticeable with the XT model.

The only thing is we have to be careful when first drawing hot water from it because it is HOT!

Overall I would highly recommend it.
Robert6401
Explorer
Mar 02, 2017
dougrainer wrote:

WHERE did you get the replacement? Non RV 120 elements are longer. Both Atwood and Suburban state you can run the 120 elements up to 20 minutes dry with no damage. Doug

I got it at a local RV parts house. It's a suburban element.

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