I am completing a small shop / office metal building at my house. I have a convenience bathroom / shower / kitchen sink that will be low volume / low use, however I do desire to have hot water when called upon for a shower etc.

I am leaning towards a tankless electric as I do not have gas plumbed in the building.

Any recommendations for tankless, or any feedback good, bad, or otherwise on tankless given my application?

All I know from experience is that tankless can suddenly stop providing hot water if too many people/appliances are using it at once, if the heater was not properly sized. Probably not an issue if one person is using it.

We have a tankless electric in our master bath to replace a tank that the builder put in the attic (dumb). It's been great over 1.5 years now.

We went with Stiebel Eltron and the largest one our electrical system would support. Install wasn't cheap as it meant running multiple, new large gauge cables over a fairly long run.

We have multiple electric tankless units between our house/office/shop. I have had zero issues with any of them and have been very happy. I think the people who have issues are the ones who severely undersize them due to not having enough power available through existing cable runs.

Our guest bathroom (sink and shower) run on an Ecosmart 18KW and it works great...never had a problem with enough hot water. It requires (2) 40amp double-pole breakers and at full tilt, it would pull a max of 75A @ 240v. They modulate their power usage so if you are just running the sink or a shower on a warmer day, it will pull significantly less than that. As long as you have that power available, I personally think it's a great choice for a single bathroom.

Tankless electric takes a lot of amps to run. ~75 amps for a smaller unit up to 150 amps for a whole house unit. If you only have a 200 amp service panel then that becomes an issue. A traditional 50 amp tank heater only pulls around 20 amps.. I have seen a 500 sq ft cabin with one bath run ok off of a smaller rheem tankless but it took a 200 amp service to run it and the rest of the house.

The electrical upgrades to support it can be very expensive. Evaluate that first. I have one at my lake cabin. It works great but I had to upgrade my service drop and panel to support it.

Just get you a propane tank and a tankless gas water heater. Tank can double as source for generator when power goes out.

I don't disagree and for most people, trying to retrofit an electric tankless into a new house doesn't work without major costs of upgrading the service amperage.

For new homes, the cost difference between 200amp and 400amp isn't huge. It's also a viable consideration to make the jump to 400amp if you then forgo propane. For me, it was quite a bit cheaper to just go all electric with 400A versus having a propane tank and the costs of propane since I don't live somewhere with natural gas service.

Interesting to read so many fans of electric demand WHs, thank you!

In Aggieland, it's hard to find enough spare electric power to run elec.demands unless a new build, to find someone to install them w/warranty due to bad history .... but to be fair, many are located on exterior walls and some near lawn sprinkler systems.

Of course, gas/propane is THE solution for demands serving whole house but this is described as a tiny demand BUT with a shower .... that requires x2-x3 the normal size needed to serve the other fixtures described here.

Process of thought toward a solution:

http://rb.gy/j2agt 10gal hot water for one shower event

http://rb.gy/gjdfu maybe you take long showers?

Filter to a source to find EZ replacements, in-stock-today items might be Home Depot, ergo
http://rb.gy/99l0q

Filter to Short, Residential but leaving the 110v options
http://rb.gy/3qeun

Filtered again
My pick based upon price, gets the higher watt recovery option and extra gallons for least price
http://rb.gy/mx6ix


My second search might be the 110v options with an eye on adequate supply & recovery wattage.



Novelty items of interested, not yet tested

http://rb.gy/am7hb

http://rb.gy/yxg4e