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Old 06-11-2013, 07:30 PM   #1
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Questions about on demand water heaters

Ok so I'm having family come stay with us in for a week this summer and I'm sort of embarrassed about the fact we would have to stagger showers and plan on doing laundry while we sleep I absolutely hate how short our hot water supply is! I can get barely get through showers myself with enough hot water before it runs ice cold, so with 4 adults and 2 children it will never happen! So I've looked at atwood, precision temp and girard, what I've seen by a few is that in the winter time it can have a problem heating the water. Well we travel for my husbands job and will most likely be in Rhode Island this winter which can have VERY cold temperatures with a lot of snow! I've seen videos saying Girard is just as good and a lot cheaper and then I see reviews saying Girard is terrible! Any help is GREATLY appreciated
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Old 06-11-2013, 08:45 PM   #2
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Your existing hot water heater...do you have the electricity AND the gas running at the same time. This will tend to give you more hot water and recharging time will be reduced.
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Old 06-12-2013, 08:43 AM   #3
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Do your research

We're very new to the RVing world but one thing we have learned a lot about because of all of the restoration we have had to do to get our new (old) one on the road is our water heater. The water heater hadn't been winterized by the previous owner so of course it had burst. We wanted the best we could find so without doing enough research we invested quite a bit extra to get an Atwood OD-5001 on-demand. We were never able to get it to work. It produced lukewarm water at best and then only for a few seconds after we turned on the tap before it went cold. After several phone calls to Atwood's technical support and after two separate certified Atwood repair centers looked at it we got a replacement unit of the same model which had exactly the same symptoms. We're not sure if it is because it is so new they simply don't have the bugs worked out or if it is because we live in the Colorado Rockies at 6000 plus feet. After three months attempting to make it work for us we finally gave up on the idea of an on-demand and went to a standard Atwood tank type water heater. On-demands are a great idea and maybe there are some that work well but we simply didn't have any luck.
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Old 06-12-2013, 02:59 PM   #4
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We had an on demand unit from precision temp in our last coach and decided that while it worked in a fashion, it was expensive and could do better.

This coach we decided to upgrade the tank type. Essentially converting our 6 gal atwood to an atwood exotherm model. This heats the water to a much higher temp and then uses a mixing valve at the out let to produce much more hot water. Roughly doubling the capacity. I can take LONG hot showers and the wife and I have no trouble with back to back showers either. We do use the gas and electric together but it works pretty well on electric alone too. This was much cheaper and works far better than the precision temp unit we had before.
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Old 06-12-2013, 06:37 PM   #5
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The on-demand units are a bit rich for my blood. I think, we'll just continue to ration the hot water.

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Old 06-12-2013, 09:54 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by steph1217 View Post
Ok so I'm having family come stay with us in for a week this summer and I'm sort of embarrassed about the fact we would have to stagger showers and plan on doing laundry while we sleep I absolutely hate how short our hot water supply is! I can get barely get through showers myself with enough hot water before it runs ice cold, so with 4 adults and 2 children it will never happen! So I've looked at atwood, precision temp and girard, what I've seen by a few is that in the winter time it can have a problem heating the water. Well we travel for my husbands job and will most likely be in Rhode Island this winter which can have VERY cold temperatures with a lot of snow! I've seen videos saying Girard is just as good and a lot cheaper and then I see reviews saying Girard is terrible! Any help is GREATLY appreciated
I don't know anything about the on-demand water heater, but I was thinking that if you are in a campground maybe your guests could use the bathhouse?

Of course, that doesn't help your Rhode Island winter!
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Old 06-12-2013, 10:16 PM   #7
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One thing that Really helped us was installing the Oxygenator Shower Head. Get much better pressure and it uses a lot less water so taking longer showers is possible. Great invention. CW has them on sale at times for under fifty bucks.
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Old 06-12-2013, 10:37 PM   #8
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One thing that Really helped us was installing the Oxygenator Shower Head. Get much better pressure and it uses a lot less water so taking longer showers is possible. Great invention. CW has them on sale at times for under fifty bucks.
I even installed them on one of the showers in the stick house. The DW really likes how powerful it is to rinse her hair. I need to buy another one for the other bathtub/shower so the 13 yr old grandson doesn't use so much water! He's REALLY wasteful of everything, plus that shower doesn't drain well due to lack of slope into the street sewer system. Less water would mean less backup in the tub as the drain won't drain as fast as the present shower head runs.
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Old 06-13-2013, 06:33 AM   #9
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One thing that Really helped us was installing the Oxygenator Shower Head. Get much better pressure and it uses a lot less water so taking longer showers is possible. Great invention. CW has them on sale at times for under fifty bucks.
X2! Best motorhome investment we ever made......
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Old 06-13-2013, 07:34 AM   #10
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Dang you gonna make me go out and buy something else for this money hole

We have the latest Girard and it works fine AS LONG AS I remember to purge the air out of all the water lines (including the run to the W/D prep we don't use).

Talk about long showers - the wife will fill up the grey tank in one shower
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Old 06-13-2013, 07:48 PM   #11
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Dang you gonna make me go out and buy something else for this money hole

We have the latest Girard and it works fine AS LONG AS I remember to purge the air out of all the water lines (including the run to the W/D prep we don't use).

Talk about long showers - the wife will fill up the grey tank in one shower
Talk about long showers - the wife will fill up the grey tank in one shower [/QUOTE]i

I heard that brother
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Old 06-13-2013, 08:13 PM   #12
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Thanks everyone for the responses they are much appreciated. I have to say, I went to bed bath and beyond tonight and grabbed the oxygenics shower head (good thing our campground is down the street from one) and I'm very impressed! I have long THICK hair, a few stylists have even said it belongs in the record books for thickness, so if i can shampoo twice and get ALL the conditioner out of it before the shower goes cold I'm thrilled. Luckily the shower head didn't disappoint! It was awesome and gave a pretty decent jet stream! Really wish when we remodeled the rv I knew about oxygenics! Now I have a $60 brushed nickel waterpik one (also from bed bath and beyond...love that store!) thats sitting in a cabinet.
Johnboytoo- does your on demand girard get hot enough for decent showers? Have you used it while camping in any extreme cold temps? Just wondering because I really want one, but what good is it going to do if its not going to get really hot. Not worried about dishes or clothes both dishwasher and washer/dryer have built in water heaters. But I want a nice long hot showers!
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Old 09-17-2013, 09:24 AM   #13
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I installed a tankless water heater in my house and after bought a digital remote that allowed me to set the exact temperature on the water. Before that I had to flip the dip switches inside the heater to set the temperature.
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Old 09-17-2013, 09:27 AM   #14
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The dip switches had only five settings but the remote allowed for about a thirty degree range.
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