HoBoPanda
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Hello everyone, First post hope this is a good spot to put this. I decided to post this here because I have read a lot a good threads on tankless heaters in nonstandard deployments and was looking for input.
I know its not a carwash but I have a unique set up where I used to use a tankless hot water heater to heat about 1000 gallons of fish tank water to 80F. Its set up just like a hydronic floor heating system with mixing valves and plate exchangers. Fish tank water on one side of the plate exchanger and a loop threw a mixing valve set to about 86F on the other side heated by the tankless unit. I have 3 zones for my different tank groups. I also have a 40gal electric tank that I use as a buffer tank to help stop short cycling of the heater. I had a free non-condensing unit from facebook marketplace that died on me over the summer. I ended up hooking up a tanked natural gas unit to get me by. Now that winter is starting the low efficiency of the tanked unit is starting to cost me. Back when I heated it with electric I had about 800Gal of water and on cold days it would take about 46KWH or about 160K BTU in 24hours to maintain ~80F. Since then, I have increased my volume to about 1000 gallons, but have insulated a lot of the tanks better. On top of the Fish heat I added a 100 Square foot concrete pad with snow melt in at the entrance of the building. The snow melt is not used yet but would like to hook it up. My free tankless unit definitely saved me money when it was running the last few years. In central Illinois. gas is much cheaper per BTU than electric in central Illinois about 2.5-3:1. I was bored over the holidays and stumbled across Amazon selling the Rheem RTGH-95DVLN-3 for $1200 plus 30% off. So I picked one up it came out to just over $900 shipped. Amazon shows the deal is still valid till January 6th but the unit price has went up since I ordered mine.
To be completely honest, I didn't do any research on this unit i just ordered knowing Amazon has a good return policy and it was cheep. The big question is am I getting a cheep Homedepot unit? Should send it back and look at a commercial Takagi or new Rinnai CX199iN or there something else I should look at in the 1-1.5K price range?
I know its not a carwash but I have a unique set up where I used to use a tankless hot water heater to heat about 1000 gallons of fish tank water to 80F. Its set up just like a hydronic floor heating system with mixing valves and plate exchangers. Fish tank water on one side of the plate exchanger and a loop threw a mixing valve set to about 86F on the other side heated by the tankless unit. I have 3 zones for my different tank groups. I also have a 40gal electric tank that I use as a buffer tank to help stop short cycling of the heater. I had a free non-condensing unit from facebook marketplace that died on me over the summer. I ended up hooking up a tanked natural gas unit to get me by. Now that winter is starting the low efficiency of the tanked unit is starting to cost me. Back when I heated it with electric I had about 800Gal of water and on cold days it would take about 46KWH or about 160K BTU in 24hours to maintain ~80F. Since then, I have increased my volume to about 1000 gallons, but have insulated a lot of the tanks better. On top of the Fish heat I added a 100 Square foot concrete pad with snow melt in at the entrance of the building. The snow melt is not used yet but would like to hook it up. My free tankless unit definitely saved me money when it was running the last few years. In central Illinois. gas is much cheaper per BTU than electric in central Illinois about 2.5-3:1. I was bored over the holidays and stumbled across Amazon selling the Rheem RTGH-95DVLN-3 for $1200 plus 30% off. So I picked one up it came out to just over $900 shipped. Amazon shows the deal is still valid till January 6th but the unit price has went up since I ordered mine.
To be completely honest, I didn't do any research on this unit i just ordered knowing Amazon has a good return policy and it was cheep. The big question is am I getting a cheep Homedepot unit? Should send it back and look at a commercial Takagi or new Rinnai CX199iN or there something else I should look at in the 1-1.5K price range?
