Tankless Hot Water System Review

When our old hot water tank packed it in, we were persuaded to go with an on-demand, tankless hot water system.  It sounded good … no more using propane to heat water when we weren’t using it.

After installation, we almost had them yank it out again.  We couldn’t get the water to get more than lukewarm!!  Not good for taking showers!

We hauled the RV back to the dealer that installed it and they found we needed to change the regulator valve on the propane because of low gas pressure.  Apparently this can cause problems (why they didn’t tell us that during the install is anyone’s guess).  Once that was fixed … VOILA … hot water.

It’s still a bit sensitive … and kinda weird.  When you want hot water you ONLY turn on the hot water tap.  Takes a few minutes, then you adjust the level of heat from there.  The HIGHER you turn the valve (to let more water thru) the colder it is.  If you want the water hotter, you turn the knob DOWN.  The reason … more water flowing through doesn’t get heated as much as small amounts of water.

So now that I’m used to it … it’s WONDERFUL.  I can take as long a shower as I want with never a fear of running out of hot water.  So my final thoughts are YES!!  Worth it!

MORE ON OUR TANKLESS HOT WATER SYSTEM:

Tankless hot water system

We purchased a Girard GSWH-1 on the recomendations of our RV dealer, who as it turns out really wasn’t very familiar with the systems at all.  To make matters worse we also didn’t do our homework and check out some of the idiosyncrasies of tankless systems.  As you may have already read in the blog, the propane pressure is crucial to make sure you are getting a proper flame, so if your RV is getting old, particularly if your propane system has not been checked and updated for over 10 years, you may have problems like we did.  The other critical issue is water pressure.  Too much or, particularly, inconsistent pressure can wreak havoc with your flow of hot water, which can quickly range from scalding hot to freezing cold. Again, older units without water saving heads on the unit can cause problems as well, this was the case with one of our taps that hadn’t been updated, at least according to the techie.

The Girard GSWH-1 has an automatic sensor which switches between high and low temperature depending on the temperature of the incoming water.  Girard makes another model which has a manual switch so you can do this yourself, and better yet they now have the GSWH-1M,  which has a gas modulation dial allowing you much better continuous control of the water temperature. If you are considering one of these systems, I would definitely recommend this option.

The bottom line so far, even though they are a little fussy to use, the fact that you can have a really long, hot shower is great!