Suburban IW60 Nautilus Tankless Water Heater?

Gdetrailer wrote:
Tank maintenance, just because a tankless water heater doesn't have a tank doesn't mean there is no maintenance. Tankless systems are prone to mineral buildup in the water tubes, To combat that there is a maintenance procedure that needs to be followed which flushes the mineral buildup out of the tubes.

Water naturally has minerals suspended in it, some sources the mineral content can be considerable. Municipal water systems tend to have lower mineral concentrations, water well sources without a softening system can have extremely high mineral content.

Something else to consider, you may need to make some propane system upgrades, regulator and hoses to the tanks may be undersized and the propane line to the tank may need to be upsized..

Tankless systems also have some limitations in just how much temperature rise you can get, the colder the input water the lower the temp of the output water.. The faster you draw the lower the rise in temperature and the slower you draw the faster the rise..

I will also note, I do not have to do any "maintenance" on my tank water heater, just fill and go, drain out the water at the end of camping season..

@Gdetrailer, thanks for your reply. As I mentioned, at the time of my original post, I was QUITE new to campers. Now, I’ll say that I haven’t had any more maintenance with my tankless than you have with your tank. Tanks can have buildup (scaling), which ours did (and doing the vinegar cleaning method ended up descaling the rust off the pinhole in the tank and it stated leaking about 2hrs into the descaling process- ha!) — anyway, I haven’t had any issues with our tankless, and no more maintenance than you (winterizing and dewinterizing).

As for your other concerns; the installed used the propane line that was already there and it’s been fine. Also, as to limits on heating, sure- the tank has other issues to weigh it against— you only have so much “hot” that you set your tank to “really hot” and mix it in when using it- this poses a significant scaling risk if you have littles running around. The risk of scaling with a tankless is far lower since you’ll likely never set it that hot (if you even can? I’ve never tried).

At the end of the day, both options have pros and cons. It’s far better to politely give all the pros and cons and let the reader decide than it is to try and sway them one way or another. Sure, we all have our preferences. But let’s be clear to distinguish between pros, cons, and preferences.