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199 of 202 people found the following review helpful.
EcoSmart ECO 27 - Pretty good, within limits
By javel001
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.
166 of 169 people found the following review helpful.
Best One On The Market
By kevcross7
Being that my whole house is entirely electric and I can't get gas here, I reveiwed and researched the electric whole house water heaters. I have three kids and 2.5 baths. That means I usually don't get a hot shower until now. This unit is great. Saved me money the first month. I went to home depot and changed my shower heads out with 1.5 gpm heads and adjusted the flow of the big tub so that now we can take two showers at the same time. I can fill the big tub and not run out. Just pay attention to the flow of your tub/faucet/etc. It takes a week or soo to get used to setting your water in the shower. For example, during two showers both are set as all hot. During one shower add a little cold. You will enjoy the unit. They addressed all the downfalls of the electric side of whole house tankless water heaters. Research it out, you will not be disappointed. Make sure you have at least 200 amp service coming in house and room for 3 double pole. 40 amp breakers. I added a sub panel on the side but I do electrical work.
61 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
So far so good
By CJR
So our water heater started leaking on June 6th, and my wife suggested we look into a tankless system. After reading reviews here and seeing such glowing results for Ecosmart, I started considering the Ecosmart 11. Due to the price, capacity and cost of install, we ended up with the Ecosmart 27. We did hear horror stories about how inefficient they are (more of that later), but decided through our own deductive reasoning that we should experience electricity savings with the unit.As of now, I'm still waiting on (and fearing) the bill from my electrician. Finding out my service amperage was painful (it recommends at least 200 amp service) because the power company didn't know how much they were supplying. Not knowing a thing about electricity (and wanting to preserve the lifetime warranty), I hired a local electrician to install, with an estimate in the $500 range. The install took them about 3-4 hours after hitting a snag or two with the breaker panel (barely enough space left for the 3 40amp DP breakers). The house's breaker panel is about 10 or 15 feet (straight shot) to the water heater, and even at that length, with 30-45 total feet (or more) of wire, a good portion of the cost was the wiring. Looking back, if I was really adventurous, I would've tried the install myself.The plumbing I handled myself. It was a bit painful for having never done it before and I got a quick course in soldering when I had to replace a corroded pipe, but it wasn't too bad. Also made sure to flush the air out of the system once everything was hooked up correctly.In any case, once the install was complete, the system worked like a charm. The hot water feels like it comes a LITTLE faster, but that's probably just me. The temperature is great (I do notice the "cold water sandwich", which to me is really more of a "tepid water sandwich") and the water really does seem to flow forever. Nice hot baths and showers without ever running out of hot water is very nice. We set our dial initially to 130 - and had to scale it back very quick! Now it's at 120, but even that is probably a bit too hot - and I like my hot showers.On to the energy consumption. I've had the unit installed for 3 full days now, and with the wonderful new (mandatory) smart meters, I can check my energy levels at any time. I haven't compiled a minute-by-minute account of the deltas, but I do have some comparisons with the conventional water heater, without any heater, and with the tankless. I list the high temperature for the day to illustrate the fact that the A/C is going to be a big factor in how much power is being used on a given day**This should all be taken with a grain of salt, as there are obviously other factors in here**Date Energy Consumption High Temp Note06/02 72.803 94 Conventional Heater06/03 72.803 9406/04 65.494 9306/05 69.415 9406/06 72.44 9406/07 30.953 75 No water heater06/10 62.666 9206/11 81.303 9606/14 57.299 9206/22 75.025 9606/23 71.817 96 Full day of tankless06/24 89.136 9806/25 110.257 103So, with a conventional water heater, energy consumption ranges from 65.494-72.803 with temperatures between 93 and 94Without a water heater (and little A/C) the energy consumption was only 30.953!Without a water heater on days between 92-96, energy consumption was 62.666-75.025With a tankless, the heat didn't cooperate, and the only comparable day was 96 using 71.817So a few things:1. These are very few data points, so comparison is really ... inaccurate.2. Energy consumption seems to be about the same or even a little less (we're a household of 2, sometimes 3 when I have my daughter)3. I need a new air conditionerOverall, I'm quite pleased with the product, but time will tell! If this is useful I'll post some updates as time goes on. Even if it uses the same amount of energy and the total price (installed) being a bit higher, with the lifetime warranty, endless hot water and space savings, it's still a decent buy in my experience.UPDATE: Got the bill from the electrician. $830. There's no real reason it should cost that much to string three wires 10 feet. I'd have done it myself for that price.UPDATE x2 (11/2012): Now that it's cooled down and we haven't used the A/C in a bit (and the heat isn't on yet either) I did a comparison for a full month to last year. On average we're using 4.34 kWH/day less, or about 10% less per day. Again, take that for what it's worth, although we do pretty much have the same major appliances as last year - no big changes in power consumption there - although the habits could be different. I can say we generally are taking MORE hot baths though.UPDATE x3 (06/2013): So far for this year, electricity usage is about 9% higher on average. Again, this could be many things, but the latest reading (through 5/7/2013) was a tiny bit lower than last year. I think there's probably too many variables to pinpoint one thing or another (although it could be that I got a triple-monitor high-end gaming PC not too long ago! woot!) Still love the constant hot water!One thing I should've mentioned long ago. Thanksgiving night (2012) we had a hot water pipe burst underneath the house, and while there were some telltale signs that this was the case (tile floor near the water heater was warm, not to mention the bit of water pooled in the garage by the heater line), the fact that the water heater was running (you can see when it's running and when it's not) when nothing was using hot water was a dead giveaway. So while the repair to reroute the pipe from under the slab to overhead PEX made my wallet cry, I don't think it had anything to do with the heater itself and having it helped us to pinpoint the problem quicker. Note that I'm a total newbie to this home-owning/home-repairing stuff, so you older/wiser folks can just keep your wisecracks about how obvious it should've been anyways to yourself =)
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