Tankless Water Heaters

I am thinking of switching from a 10 gal Atwood heater to a tankless. Thoughts/recommendations?

Thanks

Marshall

I hear the only good one is the Truma. I had a RV with a Girard and it was garbage. Took it out and replaced it with a regular one.

I have the model 1 of the Girard and agree that it is scrap. It goes between scalding and freezing no matter what. Girard even admits it was always a problem. Followed the video directions for flushing all the lines before use, blah blah. No difference.

I've read a review somewhere that the newest one is a LOT better. I was told by a dealer (don't know if he was right or not) that trying to convert to a tank would be a big problem because of space, and that getting the newest model Girard it would be slamdunk fit. Obviously,  I need to replace mine, so I'd love to hear from others who've undergone this trauma.

I had a Precision Temp RV-550 tankless water heater in my last RV that worked very well. I used it for 4 years with nary a blip. It heated fast and always delivered hot water.  The only real issue I had with it was when my propane regulator was failing, but that was not the heaters fault.

I've been watching and checking the owner evaluations of tankless water heaters for 3+ years and, without a doubt, the RV550 comes out on top. The Girard sits deep down on the bottom an the Suburban and Atwood come in between in owner satisfaction.
Bob

If you're going to put in a tankless water heater, mount it as close to your shower as you can.  I have a Sunnybrook trailer where the previous owner did a straight replacement, putting a tankless Atwood in the same location as the original water heater with about 15 ft. of pipe between there and the showerhead.  The time delay between hot water exiting the heater and when it reaches the showerhead makes adjusting the shower temperature a royal pain.

The problem is a tankless heater isn't constant temperature - the outlet temperature changes depending on how much water is flowing through the heater.

With the heater located some distance from the shower, you turn on the faucet and wait a couple of seconds for the water heater to fire up, meanwhile you're getting cold water from the hot water tap. 

When hot water arrives at the tap, you can add cold water to get the temperature you want.

With a conventional tank type heater, this would be the end of the process.  But adding cold water at the showerhead reduces the flow through the tankless heater, increasing it's output temperature.  Several seconds later, when the hotter water reaches the showerhead, you either get scalded or you repeat the adjustment process.  Usually you have to do this a couple of times as the water heater's temperature increases with each adjustment.

Hopefully you won't have to add so much cold water that you hit the heater's minimum flow cutoff, if you do the heater will shut down and several seconds later you'll be blasted by cold water.  If this happens, you have to turn off the cold water faucet, turn the hot water faucet all the way on, wait for the heater to restart and for the hot water to reach the shower, then repeat the process.