Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My electric tank-type water heater developed a leak, and after a lot of reading on the Internet I decided to replace it with a tankless unit from EcoSmart. I'm fairly handy, so I wanted to do the work myself. I bought the heater from Amazon for $453 and various electrical and plumbing supplies from Lowes and Home Depot for $251, for a total outlay of $704. Aside from the tankless unit, the biggest expense was the wire. Tearing out the old tank heater was easy and only took about a half hour. Mounting the EcoSmart unit in the same place as the old heater and creating the new plumbing connections with copper pipe took about 4 hours. Although 240-volt wiring was left over from the old heater, the 12-gauge wire was too thin, and there was only one 30-amp circuit available. The EcoSmart unit I bought needs three 40-amp circuits and 8-gauge wire. My breaker box is located about 30 feet away from the water heater location, so I had to string 3 lengths of 8-gauge, 2-conductor wire up into the ceiling and across to the breaker box. This took a full day, and crawling around in the space above the ceiling killed my knees. My electrical service is 200 amps, so I only had to find 3 double-wide slots for the new circuit breakers (one slot where the old water heater connected, and two new slots). Shuffling a few breakers around gained me the last 3 available slots. Hooking up the EcoSmart unit was simple, and the instructions are very clear. The biggest hassle was routing the heavy 8-gauge wire into the breaker box. Doing the electrical hookup took about 3 hours. After verifying that nothing leaked and all the voltages were right, I turned on a hot water tap and prepared for the worst. And Voila! Hot water. Lots of hot water. After playing with the EcoSmart unit for several hours, I have the following observations: 1. It works, pretty much as advertised. Owing to electrical power limitations, it can't produce super-hot water at high flow rates, but it has no trouble producing really hot water at low flow rates. This means that it's advisable to install low-flow heads if you like hot showers. I doubt if the EcoSmart unit can keep up with multiple showers running simultaneously, despite what they claim, but for most tasks it should be fine. The only operational quirk I've noticed is that the water temperature is initially fairly hot, then not so hot for a few seconds, then hot again forever. 2. The EcoSmart unit is well made. When and if they fail, the heating elements will be easy to replace using standard, off-the-shelf elements. The innards of the unit are nicely laid out and constructed using first-rate materials. And you can't beat the lifetime warranty. 3. The project is well within the scope of a do-it-yourselfer with decent plumbing and electrical skills. The biggest hassle is running the heavy wire, and you can expect the job to take two days if you're replacing an electric tank-style unit. The installation instructions are crystal-clear, and the troubleshooting guide is very good. Make sure you have sufficient electrical service (200 amps) and space in your breaker box for the additional breakers (or add a small sub-panel). Finally, be sure to take into account the cost of the additional plumbing and electrical stuff you'll need. The bottom line is that I'm pleased with the EcoSmart tankless water heater. Installing it was a somewhat bigger hassle than I had anticipated, but it all worked out in the end. Its only apparent limitation is an inability to produce piping hot water at high flow rates. We'll see how much money I save as time goes on.