Tankless heater to Gas

[MikenDebbie]

Originally Posted by Mike in Austin

Eric1959 - just curious...what brand is your on-demand water heater?
Suburban? Furrion? Girard? Also - is it a recirculating on-demand water heater?

As I said in my previous post - mine is a Suburban IW60.
I don't know that much about any of the other models, but if he had stated what type comes with KZ RVs, I would do a few searches to see if others have had problems. The only on-demand water heater that I have read had problems was a Suburban IW60 RL recirc unit. There was a thread on the Keystone forum from a guy that had one in his Alpine and was having trouble.

[Eric1959]

I'm not 100% sure, I'm not at the RV at this time but can check this weekend. All the manuals are also at the trailer. We're moving our stuff from a temp home to the RV. Most of the stuff in this unit is from LCI or Furrion. I'll update this this weekend.

[twinboat]

I set the temperature to a comfortable shower temperature and don't use any cold water, only turn on the hot faucet. Works fine.

I looked at my tankless heater and it looks like a gas/ electric would fit in the same spot. If your not handy with electric, just connect the gas line that's already run.

[fisher99]

Originally Posted by twinboat

I set the temperature to a comfortable shower temperature and don't use any cold water, only turn on the hot faucet. Works fine.

I looked at my tankless heater and it looks like a gas/ electric would fit in the same spot. If your not handy with electric, just connect the gas line that's already run.

Same for me. My wife, however, apparently has skin made of some heat repelling chemistry because she needs near boiling water coming out of the showerhead. And at a very high pressure. She really hates having to reduce pressure to get really hot water. As I said in an earlier post, if the incoming ground water is merely cool (most of the summer months) she is fine with our current system. But if the incoming ground water is cold (as a month or so ago when we were camped at Moab, UT and got snowed on) our system simply cannot heat the water fast enough to provide her desired temperature at full shower volume. Even for me the water pressure was marginal when I reduced volume enough for "reasonably hot" water.

And, like you, I usually leave the cold water turned off and regulate the temp by changing the volume of the hot water. However, occasionally when camping where the weather has been really hot for quite a while, and the temperature of the ground water is on the warm side of cool, I have needed to mix in some cold.

In general, I have learned to live with our tankless system but my wife would be MUCH happier with a convential hot water tank. After our last trip (and the cold water at Moab) I swore that when we got home I was going to contact my local dealer and get a price on swapping to a tank system (to keep her happy and wanting to travel) but so far I haven't called. We'll be doing warm weather camping for the next few months so I"m kicking that can down the road for now

[MikenDebbie]

I agree with twin boat. The backside of my unit - it has cold water inlet + hot water outlet + propane + power & ground. I also have a condensate drain that just pokes thru the floor and out to the ground thru the coroplast bottom. There are also 2 wires that go to the controller. The controller would be the only thing you would need to figure out how to adapt to a standard propane/electric water heater.

Personally I hope we can figure out your on demand water heater so you can enjoy it like I enjoy mine.

I will add the we do not dry camp…ever. We are always hooked up to city water and 50 amp power. I’m not sure how well the on demand unit would work in the boonies.