Portable tankless water heaters....

Subscribing, because I am another bath-loving camper!

In my S & B, the tankless does fine in summer, and in winter I need to fill the tub with a trickle, in order to get the hottest possible water. That works fine -- I add some cold to cool it down, just before I get in.

I saw a converted bread truck the other day, towing a small flatbed trailer with a clawfoot tub and laundry sink behind it. Another option :B

Roadpilot wrote:

Thinking outside the box I wonder if you could put a submersible water pump in the tub and pump from a full tub into the tankless until the temp rerached your goal. The water gains a few degrees rise with every trip from the tub to the tankless to the tub.

You could do something like that with one of the inflatable hot tub units (Lay-Z-Spa or similar; it appears that a fair few are the same basic models with different brand names and colors). I suspect the heater/circulator unit could be adapted to a different tub fairly easily, it just being a matter of hooking up a couple of hoses. I'm not sure if the heater units are available separately; I suspect not.

I use an Eccotemp L5 I bought about 8 - 10 years ago when tent and pop up camping. With outdoor temp in the 50's to 70's connected to the campgroung spigot with 50 feet of garden hose I can get 55 degree well water at the camp ground warm enough to wash dishes or take a warm shower. That would be burner on full and water flow throttled.

At home connected to the spigot outside and using city water in summer I had to turn the burner down and increase the water flow to keep from scalding my hand and the Chihuahua when giving her a bath.

I bought it through Sportsmans Guide. It is an outdoor model with a heat deflector to divert the exhaust when mounted to an outside wall. I mounted mine to a piece of plywood and use bungie cords to strap it to a tree.

An L7 or L10 might be better for filling an outdoor tub.

Roadpilot wrote:
Thinking outside the box I wonder if you could put a submersible water pump in the tub and pump from a full tub into the tankless until the temp reached your goal. The water gains a few degrees rise with every trip from the tub to the tankless to the tub.

Most tankless heaters will not work with preheated water, but some will--they are intended, IIRC, to deal with water coming from a rooftop solar water heating system that may need additional heating. Check the specs.

I had a 220 vac 7KW tankless that a plumber installed. It didn't work (southwest florida!) so I measured temp. rise. It was right on spec at 30 degrees F. I put in a 15 KW and it works great in SWFL.

The spec on any tankless is temp rise for a given flow rate. Slow down the flow and temp rise increases.

Thinking outside the box I wonder if you could put a submersible water pump in the tub and pump from a full tub into the tankless until the temp rerached your goal. The water gains a few degrees rise with every trip from the tub to the tankless to the tub.

Never heard of them. BUT, can you not find the specs at their website? I doubt a portable 120 on demand can produce 2 gallons of water hotter than 110 degrees. Doug