Water heater recommendation

[dirk919]

I have an older (1980) home that has two 40gallon water heaters. One supplies only the kitchen and laundry room and is now leaking. I know 2 40 gallon heaters have to be using a lot of electricity. We wanted to go tankless but we are total electric and only have 12ga wiring and 40 amps in the breaker for them so I assume that option is out. Should I go with a 30 gallon or maybe even smaller to save electricity? Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Stuff]

Double check what you have. Normally electric water heaters are 30 amps on 10 gauge wire. 40 amps on 12 gauge is a fire waiting to happen.

 

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[WJcandee]

I think that you will find that tank size doesn't affect annual cost very much. In fact, if you look at the annual estimated energy cost of the Kenmore 30-gallon, 40-gallon and 50-gallon HWHs, it is not only similar, it is identical. This is because it is the heating of the water that predominates on cost, not as much the maintaining, although maintaining assuredly does use energy. So if you went larger on the heater to do everything with one heater, you wouldn't have half the cost on electricity, although you might save a little bit from reduced energy spent maintaining the water.

What the bigger tank does do is give you a bigger reserve of hot water. If your setup works well, I wouldn't screw with it and would just replace the broken one with one of similar size. If you are finding that you're running out of hot water at bathing time, then a bigger tank isn't going to noticeably-increase your energy bill, unless it causes you to take much longer showers.

We have had good luck just ordering our electric water heaters from Sears and having them do the installation. At least on Long Island, the people they use are really good. And the 6-year ones have worked fine -- for longer than 6 years.

 

[hj]

All one heater in place of two does is double you 'recovery time' because you only have half the energy input with a single heater.