Wow ... woke up this morning, logged into the Pit, and discovered that water heaters are a popular subject around here (who'd a thunk it?). So ... to avoid further confusion I should explain my original cryptic post a little better:
We have two gas water heaters in our 14 year old house. For hot water purposes, the house is split into two "zones" ... for simplicity, I'll just refer to them as the "bedroom-side" and the "kitchen-side" of the house.
On the bedroom-side, we have a tankless Rinnai that provides hot water to 2 1/2 bathrooms ... and a wet bar downstairs.
On the kitchen-side, we have a 50-gallon power-exhaust tank that provides hot water to the kitchen (duh!), laundry, and one bath downstairs. Thanks to the extremely hard water in this area, it has accumulated so much mineral gunk that, even after flushing, it now only allows a trickle of water through it ... so it's going to be replaced.
My first inclination was to replace it with a new tankless (which should probably last at least twice as long as a tank). Doing so would require lots of "surgery" on the house due to the rather weird and stringent exhaust requirements for a tankless. Unlike where the existing bedroom-side tankless is installed, the mech room is not on an outside wall ... which means lots of exhaust system "gymnastics" to install a new tankless in that location.
The $6000-8000 I mentioned is an estimate for the likely cost range (from best case to worst case) for installing a tankless replacement for the old tank.
To replace with a new tank would cost a lot less ... although still pretty expensive because, while the water heater plumbing met code 14 years ago, it doesn't today.
After sleeping on it, I've decided to go with a new tank ... for a variety of reasons (not all of them related to the stupidly high cost of going with a tankless replacement).
I just explained it to SWMBO (who was lobbying for a new tankless) and as of this morning, there's been no discussion of divorce ... and no rat poison slipped into my morning coffee. Of course, there's always tomorrow ...
Oh ... and I was joking about the busted unit being for sale. Unless someone wants it really bad. It won't be cheap ...
We have two gas water heaters in our 14 year old house. For hot water purposes, the house is split into two "zones" ... for simplicity, I'll just refer to them as the "bedroom-side" and the "kitchen-side" of the house.
On the bedroom-side, we have a tankless Rinnai that provides hot water to 2 1/2 bathrooms ... and a wet bar downstairs.
On the kitchen-side, we have a 50-gallon power-exhaust tank that provides hot water to the kitchen (duh!), laundry, and one bath downstairs. Thanks to the extremely hard water in this area, it has accumulated so much mineral gunk that, even after flushing, it now only allows a trickle of water through it ... so it's going to be replaced.
My first inclination was to replace it with a new tankless (which should probably last at least twice as long as a tank). Doing so would require lots of "surgery" on the house due to the rather weird and stringent exhaust requirements for a tankless. Unlike where the existing bedroom-side tankless is installed, the mech room is not on an outside wall ... which means lots of exhaust system "gymnastics" to install a new tankless in that location.
The $6000-8000 I mentioned is an estimate for the likely cost range (from best case to worst case) for installing a tankless replacement for the old tank.
To replace with a new tank would cost a lot less ... although still pretty expensive because, while the water heater plumbing met code 14 years ago, it doesn't today.
After sleeping on it, I've decided to go with a new tank ... for a variety of reasons (not all of them related to the stupidly high cost of going with a tankless replacement).
I just explained it to SWMBO (who was lobbying for a new tankless) and as of this morning, there's been no discussion of divorce ... and no rat poison slipped into my morning coffee. Of course, there's always tomorrow ...
Oh ... and I was joking about the busted unit being for sale. Unless someone wants it really bad. It won't be cheap ...
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