Tankless help!!!

[Sleeders1959]

Help! I have an 8 unit (one bedroom and one bath per unit) apartment bldg with one meter and eight gas water heaters. Can I replace them with one high capacity tankless unit?

 

[frodo]

no, you would need a boiler and a heat exchanger, storage tank, pumps etc.

 

[phishfood]

The situation you describe would need someone who really knows what they are doing to make a tankless setup work well. You are looking at probably at least two units, with a storage tank and a recirculating pump to keep the water in the tank hot.

 

[frodo]

The situation you describe would need someone who really knows what they are doing to make a tankless setup work well. You are looking at probably at least two units, with a storage tank and a recirculating pump to keep the water in the tank hot.

no way. 8 apartments, split into 2 units.

nah...alll that would take is for apartment #1 to take a shower the same time
as #2 and #3.. and you willl have screaming tenants.
that will demand to be set up in a holiday inn till you get it fixed

those tankless heaters will not recover fast enough for multiple apartments


just my opinion, take it and try and buy a cup of coffee



you need a storage tank. that right there defeats the whole purpose of a tankless

250 gallon commercial w/h with 250 gallon storage and cir lines to each unit

 

[phishfood]

Like I said, it would need someone who really knows what they are doing. Noritz has a commercial unit that burns 380k btu's, if the incoming and outgoing temps were within range, two of those might do it. Definitely not something to be designed over the internet.

 

[cdimarco1984]

It can be done with tankless but like everything else you have to weigh the pros and cons. We use Rheem and they make a 9.5 which gives you 9 gallons per minute. With 8 units you are looking at about 4 tankless w/h's. Rheem makes a cable that links the w/h's together so they work properly you can also use a recirculating pump that is designed for tankless w/h's. If you use the wrong kind the w/h's will constantly run. The issues are if you only have electric it's cost a fortune to have an electrician come in and redo a breaker box to accommodate the tankless. Also with the gas tankless it gets costly to install because you need to increase gas lines due to the demand of the w/h's.

 

[jim603]

Help! I have an 8 unit (one bedroom and one bath per unit) apartment bldg with one meter and eight gas water heaters. Can I replace them with one high capacity tankless unit?

Many companies, like A.O. Smith, Navien, etc allow for cascading units. If you have 8 units and all 8 are taking showers at the same time (not a far fetched thought) then you would need to have the capacity of handling those 8 showers at the same time and additional capacity if someone is washing dishes or using a sink in any other fashion.

I personally would sell you on a cascading Navien with probably three NPE-A 240's. Three should be sufficient to handle your load.