Along with not having a drain, my breaker box is completely full so I can’t run another line from it.
PSU
PSU
One of the main problems I would have is that there isn’t a floor drain in the garage. A condensate line would need to be run through the wall to the outside.
Yup, that is a big concern of mine. We don’t have a floor drain in the garage, and we’re on a slab. I imagine they would have to run a line on the wall to get to the outside wall, then create a hole and run it to the outside.
I think I’ve read enough here (thanks, everyone) to go to the next step, and get a few quotes. If there’s very little out-of-pocket, then I’ll go for it. But if it begins to approach the cost of a gas model, I’ll probably just wait and see how much longer I can get out of it.
Ha! As I was writing the above, I remembered I wanted to inspect the top of our water heater (after watching a Youtube video on annual maintenance). So I just did that … and found an inch-deep puddle of water surrounding both the intake out outtake pipes coming from the water heater. So looks like it’s definitely time to replace it.
Along with not having a drain, my breaker box is completely full so I can’t run another line from it.
That sounds like it is time for a preemptive upgrade to add a secondary panel when you don’t urgently need one yet. When the time comes that you just have to have the new circuit it will probably be when the added time will be particularly painful. (At least that is how things work for me.)
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That sounds like it is time for a preemptive upgrade to add a secondary panel when you don’t urgently need one yet. When the time comes that you just have to have the new circuit it will probably be when the added time will be particularly painful. (At least that is how things work for me.)
Maybe if I wasn’t moving this summer. The house already has three panels. The one that is full is the one in the garage that has most of circuits in the house going to it.
PSU
So I bought an 85 gallon Rheem Marathon. It is sitting there waiting to be hooked up in the next few weeks.
Excellent Choice!
As a final update to this thread, as luck would have it, our gas water heater started leaking water suddenly last week. We luckily discovered it in time before fewer than 5 gallons had spilled out, but it still caused quite a mess in the garage (lots of cardboard boxes got soaked).
We’d had 2 companies over by that time to give quotes, but only one of them had actually got back to us with an actual proposal. So we called them up, and it took some work on their part, but they were able to get it scheduled for 4 days later (which was last Friday). Everything went well, and we are enjoying the bliss of not thinking about hot water once again (amazing how one takes things for granted!).
The unit should cost less to use than the gas equivalent (and thanks to rebates, it cost less than a gas replacement would have). It’s pretty noisy, though we can’t hear it in any room in the house except the ‘guest bath’ that is right next to the garage. But that noise gives me pause about replacing our a/c and gas furnace with a heat pump (and air handler), as I’m afraid it would be audible in our bedroom. So still undecided about that … but that’s a different thread.
By the way, they ran the condensate line into the return water line (I think that’s what he said), using a check valve to prevent it from going the wrong direction. Or something like that. I was just thrilled that they didn’t have to run a line from there to an outside wall, and install a pump, as originally quoted.