Great article on Tankless, use, installation and inspection.

[William J. Decker]

Check this article out. Very comprehensive and great to print out and had to your clients (AND their contractors)!

http://paragoninspects.com/tankless-...go-il-faq.html

[Darren Spencer]

Believe these are Copywrited from the owner and one would need permission?

[William J. Decker]

Originally Posted by dspencer1

Believe these are Copywrited from the owner and one would need permission?

I know him. Call him.

He probably won't mind.

If you print it out and hand it out, with the copyright, no harm, no foul.

Hope this helps;

[Michael D. Thomas]

Thanks for the kind words about the site.

As readers will note looking at the credits and links at the Paragon site, many people here and elsewhere have contributed their knowledge, experience and examples to improve the accuracy and usefulness of the information there. The contributions of posters at venues such as this one have been one of the most important sources of knowledge as I constantly attempt to improve my abilities both as an inspector and as an “educator” of anyone who read my reports, and I deeply appreciate the time and effort of everyone who has taken the time to participate here.

With regard to copyright issues, home inspectors are welcome to re-print any of the articles at http://www.paragonisnpects.com on a case-by-case basis as a handout to individual clients, contractors, real estate agents and others directly involved in an individual inspection.

Anyone here is also welcome to link to any articles there from their own sites, including the use of reasonably sized thumbnail reproductions of material at the Paragon site as part of the link’s anchor.

However, permission is NOT granted to reproduce larger quantities of any material at the Paragon website on other sites, in printed promotional material or for use in public presentations without prior written consent.

My general standard for granting permissions is that I’m fine with seeing portions of my articles used in non commercial “educational” settings, but do not want to see it used for advertising or other promotional efforts. I am also usually happy to grant permission to use individual photographs or quote reasonably sized amounts of material on other home inspection and vendor sites- after all, many others have generously granted me permission to do the same at the Paragon site - but please, ask first.

Finally, as always I welcome any questions, comments or suggestions with regard to anything that I post here or elsewhere.

[Rick Maday]

Will, Thanks for pointing us to the info.

Michael, Thank you for allowing us to use this to educate clients on an individual basis.

I just peeked at a couple article - great stuff!

[Michael D. Thomas]

BTW, I'm aware that some pages at www.paragoninspects.com do not display properly for some IE 6 users (everything works in IE 7, Firefox most other browsers, and on beta versions the next IE and Firefox) and we are working on these at the moment.

[jschulte]

Michael, any experience with electric tankless units?

[Michael D. Thomas]

Never seen one - in my climate (the input water temp at my house has dropped as low as 38F) you need 180-220A to run a whole-house tankless unit, and that would mean a new service for almost anyone considering replacement of a tank type unit.

[Brian A. MacNeish]

Originally Posted by jschulte

Michael, any experience with electric tankless units?

From the Paragon site:
"The payback period for tankless water heaters is considerable. In one test simulating normal household usage a gas fired tankless heater saved around $97 a year compared with a convention tank type heater. As the installed cost difference between and tank and tankless unit often exceeds $500 and can be two to three times that, under some conditions the expected payback time of a tankless unit can exceed its expected operating life!"

A well installed and insulated electric tank is cheaper than an electric tankless heater.

The Energy Factor (EF- another way of stating overall efficiency) is from 0.8 to 0.9 for the tankless units. Most standard electric storage tanks come from the factory at about 0.85 - 0.90 EF. By using 3 or 4 little improvements at installation (about $50-75 extra), the tank EF will end up at 0.94 or a bit higher. I'm sticking with my tank for now, unless I get really Scrooge and Scottish like and decide to heat my water with wood also.