Tankless hot water?

 I'm presently renting a HWT from Enbridge (gas company) for just under
CDN$10 a month.  It seems to me that it's worth buying one.  But I'm
also looking longingly at the tankless units, both electric and gas.

The savings from buying a new tank are clearly there.  But what about
the tankless?  I live alone and have the water just hot enough to wash
dishes by hand (I can usually shower with no or minimal cold added).
Other than that I occasionally do laundry.  I'm away a fair bit but I
always turn the tank way down.

I assume there will still be savings but how long would it take to pay
off?  I can also imagine that if I decided to sell the house, and the
agent said it should have a tank for sales appeal, I could buy a cheap
tank and take the tankless with me.

Also, as I understand it, the temperature of the tankless should be
set to whatever you need without cold water.  So that would probably
be dishes and a little cold water added to the shower.   But what if I
get a dishwasher, won't I want even hotter water?  Do any of the
tankless units have a remote temperature control so I could bump up
the temperature from the kitchen, run the dishwasher, then turn it
back down again?

Thanks for any advice!

andrew

andrew [awebber@wwwebbers.com]
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<sigh>

 The tangles model I knew didn't have adjustable temperature. You
adjust the temperature by mixing in cold water yourself but that was
many years ago maybe the newer model improved?  Also last time I
calculated if I want to recover the price difference between
tanked/tankless (gas) model from the energy saving of the tangles model,
given the gas price in the US, it'd take me years (and many of
them) to recover.

FC

Andrew Webber wrote:

 Andrew Webber wrote:

Every dishwasher I know of has a heating element in it to
make the water hot. Of course, you still hook the dishwasher's
supply line to the hot supply.

The heating element may not get activated unless you turn on the
"sanitize" option, or something like that.

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Manager of Information Technology | If you're too open-minded,                |
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These units have been much discussed in this newsgroup and
alt.home.repair. Do some searching on groups.google.com. If I may
summarize, opinion is varied as to whether the theoretical savings
will make up for the cost of buying, installing and maintaining the
things.

Per your dishwasher question, I have actually seen a brochure for an
integrated (heat+hot water) boiler that used a custom thermostat which
allowed hot water temp to be set from your living room wall. As if the
typical family doesn't have enough to argue about.  However, I think
the short answer is that all dishwashers (and a few high-end washing
machines) heat their incoming water internally to suit the operating
cycle you've chosen. You're paying electrical rates for that, but the
volume is very small.

If you want to proceed and you're in the Toronto area, e-mail me and
I'll recommend a heating installer who's happy to quote on a range of
these products.

Chip C
Toronto