LESLIE: Skip in Rhode Island wants to talk water heating. What can we do for you?
SKIP: I have a multifamily home and I’m going through water heaters once every three years.
TOM: Wow.
SKIP: I’m wondering if an individual water heater would be best for each unit or just one whole one for the house.
TOM: Well, it’d probably me more energy efficient to have individual water heaters. Have you thought about going tankless?
SKIP: No, I have not. I really didn’t know the pros and cons.
TOM: If you go with a tankless water heater you can get one sized appropriately for each unit …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: … in the building and it also is going to be …
LESLIE: This way you don’t have to worry about taking up valuable real estate on the inside.
TOM: And it’s also going to be an on-demand system so you’re only going to be paying for the energy it takes to actually heat the water you use as opposed to just keeping it warm 24/7/365 which is the way a normal water heater works. You can size them based on the number of bathrooms in each individual unit so if one unit has one bath and one unit has two baths that might be a slightly different sized unit and they can be direct vented like through the side wall so they don’t even have to be centrally located and go up through a chimney.
If you want to get some background on them a good website is Rheem Tankless – R-h-e-e-m Tankless.com. That is the – that is one of the sponsors of our show and they make a very good piece of equipment, the Rheem tankless water heater, and you can learn more about what it takes to install a tankless system. But there’s a lot of advantages to this, not the least of which is that you can have an on-demand supply of endless hot water.
SKIP: Is it normal to go through so many water heaters in that period of time?
TOM: Probably not, but you’ve got a lot of heavy usage and I don’t know what kind of water heaters you’re putting in. If you’re not putting in a good quality unit then it might be that they’re corroding out pretty early.
SKIP: Yeah, 80 gallon hot water heaters; these high-efficiencies, high turnovers. They’re supposed to be for commercial use.
TOM: Yeah. Well, it certainly doesn’t sound normal …
SKIP: OK.
TOM: … and that’s why you might want to think – it’s gas-fired, right?
SKIP: Yes, it is. Yes.
TOM: And I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Skip, just to kind of help you out because you have a multifamily home. We will give you a membership to the Money Pit Homeowners – the Money Pit American Homeowners Association membership.
SKIP: Great.
TOM: And what that’s going to do is give you access to finding discounts on home improvement products and qualified contractors as well as a host of services that can help you out with this building just for calling in today.
SKIP: [It’ll be well used] (ph). Thank you.
TOM: Alright, Skip.
LESLIE: You will, I’m sure.
SKIP: (chuckling) Thanks.
TOM: Skip, what we’re going to do is have you call us at 866-Real-Home. That’s the membership number. It’s 866-Real-Home and they will have your name and they’ll hook you up.
SKIP: Alright, thank you very much.
TOM: Alright, and for anyone else that’s interested in the Homeowners – and for anyone else that’s interested in the Money Pit American Homeowners Association membership, if you call in to 866-Real-Home we will give you 30 days for free so you can kind of check it out and a Zircon laser level to boot just for giving it a try.
Skip, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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