In Hot Water

I met with my contractor this morning. He got the list from Ferguson's for the bathroom fixtures, and I came out about $700 below my allowance.

That's the good news. Unfortunately, the bad news is ten times that.

Since I am going to have a shower with a regular showerhead, a handheld, and two body sprays, I could potentially pull 2.5 gallons of water per minute with each of those. If I were to keep my 50-gallon tank, I'd have about 2 minutes of shower time before the cold water refilling the tank would pretty much end my hot water supply.

So the choices are to add a tankless hot water heater in tandem with the existing tank, or remove the tank and add two tankless. One tankless isn't enough because it can't heat cold water to shower temperature fast enough for ten gallons of flow. The combination of the tank and the tankless would expand my shower time to about 12 minutes, but for unlimited hot water, two tankless is the only solution.

The problem is that my gas supply is inadequate to drive two tankless hot water heaters (each of which uses a lot more gas than a single tank system), plus my furnace, plus my gas range. This means bringing a bigger gas supply into the house. The combination of installing the two new hot water heaters, removing the existing tank, and running the new line into the house is upwards of $7000; and if it requires them to dig up my landscape in the front of the house, it's a lot worse. They may be able to tunnel in; that remains to be seen.

But I was looking at the option of using electric tankless hot water heaters instead of gas. I might already have adequate electric service, and even if I don't, it seems to me that would be a lot less expensive. So I've dashed off an email to my contractor, and we'll see what he says.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment to decide on my custom vanity. Next Tuesday I select tile, and probably this Saturday I'll go pick out lighting. I'll be back with details of what I select and what gets decided about the hot water situation.