water heater & furnace

chocolatebean

anyone know which brand to buy? Does anyone know if those on-demand (tankless) water heater a good buy or not? This is the first time we are doing this, please give me some suggestions. Thanks

Quest

For water heater: you have to be careful.

If your original/current one is a storage tank type heater (assuming it's natural gas type), then changing to tankless water heater may ended up costing you more RE: need to modify the exhaust vent pipe (B-pipe) and also need to have an external wall close by for your tankless water heater venting.

Ordinary/conventional storage tank type heater venting cannot be retrofitted/modified to vent for tankless water heater type... Cost to modify/re-run the venting if you run tankless would probably offset the savings from switching to tankless.

Also: It's not really that beneficial (*you don't save all that much) if your tankless water heater is to feed very long lengths of internal piping to bathrooms, kitchen sinks, etc. that are far, far away from it, for you'll lose a lot of energy (*in form of heat*) even by switching to tankless.

And then that's the need to reverse-flush with acid (vinegar, etc.) periodically to rid of water scales formed inside those tankless water heater in order to maintain max. efficiency.

An extremely well-insulated tank type storage water heater (assuming natural gas still) would be just as saving as tankless, only about 15% less saving.

Lastly: on natural-gas heater furnace: it's now federally mandatory to run 90%+ efficiency (AFUE) furnace throughout Canada, so single-stage, while it's been discontinued, is no longer advisable (*unless you have a very old venting system in your house, and routing a new furnace exhaust to outside deemed impossible). While I do see some ads/flyers advertising a single-stage, high efficiency (max. 80~85% AFUE efficiency) is still avail from some companies, it is, to be honest with you, best to go with 2-stage condensing furnace that are typically 95~97% AFUE efficiency) these days, for the savings are immediate and the benefits are far greater than that of retrofitting with a single-stage one, price difference (with all the provincal/Fortis/federal rebates combined) is only a few hundred dollars.

Pretty much all major brand names are fine (carrier, trane, Goodman, GE, Bryant, etc.) and quality are pretty much the same.

Q.

B2L2

Tankless will save space, save energy (i.e. money), less chance to leak and rust.  

However, if you live in a house with multiple people, tankless may not able to provide hot water to all your sources.  In this cases, you may need two tankless heaters.

Tankless still needs to run on gas in BC (unlike HK which you could get electric tankless heater).

chocolatebean

回復 2# Quest

I don't think I will go for tankless anyways, after reading all those reviews online.
Do you have any company that you can recommend for the replacement? I am totally new on this, any advise would be great. Thank you.

Quest

my family, relatives and friends all had their fair share of issues with certain shops that aggressively advertised in Chinese newspapers, or flyers that regularly shows up at your doorstep.

PM me and I'll give you my list (sorry, don't wanna offend anyone else even though there's no conflict of interest with me.

Q.

布小熊

yes.. my dad randomly called some guy on the Chinese paper. They now ended up with a smaller tank than they should have installed. Plus that guy came by himself and asked my OLD mother to help him to move the old tank out!?? that's ridiculous!

peter236

yes.. my dad randomly called some guy on the Chinese paper. They now ended up with a smaller tank th ...
布小熊 發表於 2012-10-16 22:10

Just checkout the Yellow pages. There are many reputable companies.

chocolatebean

Thank U all for all your helpful suggestions. I live in east vancouver, and my house is 21 yrs old, the previous owner probably didn't do a good job on maintaining it. The water tank and furnace is still working, but we are just afraid one day it might leak and cause damage in the basement. Do all of you do annual service on your furnace and boiler? Some ppl said don't do anything on the old machine if it is still working, once you touch it, it might break down, some ppl said u should, it is very confusing....

blue20ae

What type of water tank do you have right now?  You mentioned "water tank and furnace".  Are you saying you have one single system doing hot water and heat?   If so, you can't go to tankless and have to stay with hot water thank.

There should be a date code on water tank (literally boilerplate ).  You can also check the warranty period using the tank's model.    As a rule of thumb, if you won't have warranty then be prepare it to fail.

For preventive maintenance, you should drain the tank once a year.  You can check out the web or youtube for details on how this is done.

chocolatebean

回復 9# blue20ae

My water tank is a GE 40 gallon one, have to look up the model # when i get home. I think it was replaced in 2006, not sure how many years of warranty it has, have to look that up...but my furnace is located behind the water tank...and the space to get to the furnace is very tight, i think only a skinny person can go through...I haven't taken a closer look at the furnace since it is at the back and hard to get in but i am assuming it comes original with the house..guessing 21yrs now. Since the space was so tight, a company had told me that if one day i have to replace my furnace, i would need to take out the water tank in order to access the furnace and do the replacement. So i am debating whether i should replace both items at the same time and give myself a peace of mind that they would last for another good 12+yrs, or wait till either one break down and replace them both. We had a maintenance guy came in and service them both, but he said they are still good and running, he suggested me not to flush it or touch it, since it is old if you start taking things apart it might break down right away...thus it's better to leave it alone, and let it runs till the end....so it's my decision whether to service it or not..no one know what will happen once he starts taking things apart...x.x