DEBUNKING Tankless water heater LIES!

on the build show today tank versus tankless you know there's really eight big lies out there about tankless water heaters but before we get into those i've got four compelling reasons why you probably want to make that switch from that big old tank and the first one is space that thing's a beast and look how tiny these are hanging on the wall plus you can put them on the outside of your house if you're remodeling you can easily get some space back number two efficiency these are like 95 percent thermally efficient a lot of tanks are like 60 percent efficient so a big savings on efficiency the biggest reason though when i talk about tankless is got to be endless hot water not running out of hot water who wants a cold shower nobody when you've got a tankless you're not going to get a cold shower and the fourth and final reason longevity these guys are going to get two decades plus service out of them a lot of times after 10 years you're replacing that tank today's build show all about the eight lies of tankless sponsored by renai let's get going [Music] tankless doesn't work with cold inlet temperatures now this is a total lie they've sold like a hundred thousand of these tankless units per year in canada and in the north canada michigan all these places we're talking about like 40 degree inlet water temperature let's do the math on this this unit right here 199 000 btus if the water coming into the unit is 40 degrees and we've got 120 as our output that's an 80 degree rise we can actually get five gallons per minute out of one of these tankless units which means i can actually run three showers simultaneously now if you're like me you're thinking wait a minute three showers five gallons per minute but we have to break that down you know when you take a shower your shower head might be somewhere between two or maybe two and a half gallons a minute but you're not showering in 120 i showered 105 which means that i'm only using maybe 1.7 1.5 gallons a minute out of the tank list and i'm tempering with some cold water whenever i shower that's why i'm saying you could easily get three showers out of one of these even with 40 degree inlet temperature these don't work in cold temperatures total lie tankless units are expensive and expensive to install you know the last couple years we've seen prices on tanks go up and up and up and now you can actually get a non-condensing unit for the same or maybe even less price than a tank and believe it or not a good plumber who knows what he's doing they can install these in basically the same amount of time as a standard tank so they'll lie about these being expensive to buy and install totally untrue venting is too expensive on tankless units all right let's break this down come check this out rinai for their non-condensing units as this vent right here this is a concentric vent which is plastic on the outside and aluminum on the inside not a very expensive vent and we can use that on all their non-condensing units even less expensive is this right here pvc venting this is a condensing unit where we can use two inch pvc to vent this to the outside we can even take combustion air from the inside with this pvc that is totally a lie that venting is too expensive scale in hard water is a problem for tankless water heaters all right think about this guys no it doesn't matter what water heater you have scale and hard water can be a problem if you've got a tankless you need to maintain it if you've got a tank you also need to maintain it now here's the hidden truth about tanks i cut a bunch open a few years ago and was absolutely shocked at how disgusting they were on the inside the scale had built up to it was a foot or more thick in the bottom of some tanks that weren't even a decade old so whether you have tank or tankless you've got to maintain it you've got to do something about your hard water and scale so tankless units are more prone to scaling hard water issues totally alive no matter what you install at your house you've got to maintain it and you've got to deal with hard water and scale issues tankless water heaters are slow to respond to demand all right think about this doesn't matter what is making your hot water it's the amount of cold water that's between this unit and your fixture that you're using that's going to dictate how long it takes to get hot water out of your faucet now when it comes to tankless renai has several units that have built-in circulation pumps that's a really big deal but you know i think this lie actually stems back to the 90s when i remember first learning about tankless and i heard people calling this category instant hot water heaters i think people thought instant hot water like that thing that makes tea at your kitchen sink that is not what's going on here these work the same as a tank or tankless it doesn't matter they're making hot water they're doing it in a remote location and that water's got to get to your fixture so if this is a problem for you consider one of the renai units that has a pump in it totally a lie that these don't get hot water quickly to your fixtures stainless steel heat exchangers are better there's some manufacturers of tankless that only have stainless steel heat exchangers and i always kind of thought that was interesting you know when i when i put wiring in my houses i don't use stainless steel wiring i use copper wiring right so how are they putting stainless steel in there well the stainless steel is used most of the time by manufacturers in their condensing models because when you condense that flue gas there's some extra acidity there's some other things that could really break down lesser metals so if you look at the branai and their condensing model stainless steel that makes sense on the other hand they're models like this one that are non-condensing the heat exchangers are copper which totally makes sense for me copper is a much better conductor of heat so renai says hey when we manufacture we're going to use the right material for the right location totally a lie that you have to use stainless steel for your heat exchanger and your tankless water heater low gas pressure makes the installation of tankless unaffordable now here's where this live stems from if we had a tank here and we were pulling that tank out replacing it with tankless there's this lie there's this myth that you'd always have to upgrade the line the gas supply size you're not going to necessarily have to do that and here's why on these condensing models like this run eye here's your gas line coming in and in combination between their technology on the regulator and the turbo fan they can actually draw the gas through the line so in many cases you won't need to upgrade your gas supply tankless is a new technology that hasn't been proven yet all right so here's the deal renae has been selling tankless water heaters in america since the 1990s but for decades prior to that they've been selling in japan and when i visited japan in the 1990s every house had tankless this is a really proven reliable technology and that's why on these tankless units you're seeing two decades plus of service whereas most of the tanks out there are getting replaced in 10 to 15 years guys big thanks to renai for sponsoring today's video i think these are a lot of myths by that old crew who's maybe not quite sure about this new technology this newfangled stuff but if you look into renae's lineup man they've got some really really cool products and i think that there's a lot of solutions that can really make your customers happy and like i said at the beginning of the video the best thing about tankless never running out of hot water guys if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button we've got new content here every tuesday and every friday follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 384,722

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build, rinnai, tankless, water heater, hot water heaters, hot water, tankless water heater

Id: _RZ3IVK2p5Q

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2022