Opinions on tankless water heaters, please
 

We are considering replacing our ailing water heater with a tankless one. I have only one experience with them, years ago, and it was bad -- the hot water quit in the middle of my shower. Are they any better now? Do you prefer it to the conventional kind? Did it affect your power bill? Are they much more expensive? Any info would be appreciated. Thank you!

Love mine. I never run out of hot water. it cost a little more to install but that beats a pilot light on using gas up all the time.

We are on our second one as we had it installed in the current house and had one in the last house. We too never run out of hot water. It heats the water as you need not keeping hot water on standby all the times as with regular hot water heaters. Our current house had the hot water heater installed in a closet in the foyer hallway and it was fairly old. We could just imagine comeing home one day to a leaking water heater and having ruined floors. They are not cheap to install but you will save that money in heating bills. Remember, you are not heating water 24 hours a day anymore. Our only negative with it is that it takes about a minute to get hot water to the kitchen sink (fartherist point away from the heater) and if I keep turning the hot water on and off as I am washing dish after dish, it will start to run cold before going back to hot again. However, we are looking into installing the recirculting pump that will remedy that problem. In the meantime, I just make sure to wash a bunch of the dirty pots, etc. then rinse them all at once instead of one at a time so I don't have the "going cold" problem.

Forgot to say, we never run out of hot water while showering as it just continues to heat water as long as someone has the shower on.

my old house couldn't have one. pipes too old or something. sniff, sniff.

We like it and have two for our house.

I just had a Bosch propane tankless put in and I love it. It is in the closet in my bedroom and I remember the old one turning on and off all night and I cringed at the power it used plus with our hard water the heaters would fill up with calcium and we had to throw it out then. Our hard water build up made flakes that wouldn't run out the drain pipe so it built up or I had to open it up and srape it out. They are more money but worth it.
Lynda

We installed one in our former house and loved it. Never ran out of hot water, wish we had the money to get another one for our current house.

Have one, love it.

We are about to start seriously shopping for a pair for our house. Our heater is getting old and needs replacing and we're trying to modernize our home somewhat, so we're looking into getting one for downstairs and another for upstairs.

A friend of ours has had one in his house for several years and he LOVES it. Theirs is right in their pantry so their kitchen tap gets very hot very fast! That's what I want, so we want one for downstairs (where all the big appliances are) and anther upstairs (where all the showers are).

We might have to get just one, due to cost (we need a new roof too), but we'll see. :)

Water heater question
 

We researched them when we built our house and decided on a recirculating pump on our water heater instead. We always have hot water quickly even at the remote end of the house without wasting water trying to get it hot. I did not like the idea of taking up space under a bathroom sink for the tankless ones. We put the water heater in the garage where there is a drain if it ever leaks.