Navien.   Tankless.   Model NPE-240A.  Google it to see it, sort of cool, in a hot water tank cool kind of way.  For you old schoolers, think the size of the backpack when the astronauts walked on the moon, 1969 style……and for your generation nowers, it’s roughly…..1 foot deep, 1.5 feet wide, less than 3 feet tall.  Basically a big backpack screwed to the wall putting out endless amounts of hotwater.

Hotwater tanks don’t invoke passion in me, but design does.  This thing looks cool.  Crisp white, a few water lines in and out, an exhaust line, and then the nifty deep blue LED style deep blue water temp “gauge” right in front.   In the closet, I really don’t look at it much, but when I go into the closet, I’m thinking, I’ve got a cool hotwater tank…….I should’ve mounted it to the wall in the living room right above the flat screen TV. 

Lets go thru the what and the why.   The what is above.   The why is because we had an old nasty inefficient gas hotwater tank, upright style, blocked access to the back of the closet that went under the stairs……..just a regular old HW tank.  It was 12 years old-ish, and on it’s second set of ignitors, I probably could have nursed it along, but I decided to just buck up, replace it, get eco-friendly, and then hug a tree too.   Options were what we did, versus standard upright 50 gallon gas tank, high efficiency.

So I did the research, and supposedly tankless HW tanks have a potential for the cold sandwich effect, which is really fine by me, nothing tastes better than cold roast beef with swiss, some sweet dijon……whoops, not that cold sandwich but some weird cold water burst in between time the faucet is on or whatever……I’m still not clear on this…….fact is, our house is a long ranch style, and it takes a few seconds to get hot water……..but it comes, it’s just like the old tank did it…………so I guess I make cold sandwiches, but we don’t get cold sandwiches……..and the hotwater is endless, it just won’t run out.  Two showers going at once, and the dishwasher, no problem, there is endless hot water……….nobody is getting a cold shower no matter what. 

Lets do the math now……..Energy Trust of Oregon told me no dice on tankless units for rebates, the upright tanks were cheaper cost overall, and just as good.  Ok I said……..but I still get the Oregon tax credit and Federal credit too, just no love from the ETO……..fine, their “rebate” was a couple of hundred, don’t want to thumb my nose ever at money, but $200 isn’t going to make me compromise much if at all……..because now I can easily get to the Easter and Christmas boxes, with zero fuss, when a typical tank design was a dodge and perry, a twist and spin, to get those boxes out…….so the math is something like this….$2400 for normal upright high efficiency tank, $3000 for the tankless R2D2 desig.   State and Fed credit, same……but no ETO rebate, so I lose out there of probably $200 ish……..lets call it an $800 gap……..back to the spin and twist, storage space, vertabrae twisting……..$800 is fine by me all day long. for more storage and less hassle getting into the closet.  Plus the cool factor, that’s worth something, you gotta see this thing up close, it’s just design minded coolio.

Here’s really my point, hot water tanks cost money to operate monthly.  The data points to gas high efficiency as a 5 year – ish payback.   Perhaps it’s really 7 years.   I’m good with that, it’s not a huge return, but I get more space to store boxes, it’s cool looking, and I get a return on the investment, in the form of savings.  I’m good with it all………and perhaps I’m even saving the environment too……….