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Advice Needed: Condensing Water Tank Buy vs Rent

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  • Oct 27th, 2014 7:16 am
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Jr. Member
Jul 10, 2007
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Ottawa

Advice Needed: Condensing Water Tank Buy vs Rent

I've been scouring the internet off and on to try to figure out what I should do with my current rental hot water tank. We moved into our new home in 2012 and part of the agreement was that we need to rent our hot water tank for a minimum of 1 year. The water tank that was installed in our home is a 90% high efficient condensing water tank. Our current rental charge with Reliance Home is $132 every 3 months so $528 for the year. Now that we've been in our home for 2 years now, we've paid over $1000 in rental fees on this tank and after doing a lot of research, it makes sense for us to buy out of the contract and own our own tank.

I called Reliance to see what our options are and we can buy out our current tank for roughly $2000, or pay a few fee's to remove/return our current tank and go buy/install our own. I did some research to try to find how much our current tank sells for but could not find a price online for a tank that closely resembles the one we currently have. I researched some tankless options but would rather have a tank in the home vs one of the newer tankless models.

Since I couldn't find any decent pricing information online, I decided to email a few companies in my area to get an idea of pricing. One company came back with a quote for just over $5000 + HST. Based on that quote, I'm back to debating the rent vs buy option for this particular water tank. I'm not sure if the tank will still have a valid warranty if I decide to buy it out from Reliance but from a cost point of view if the current buy-out price is $2000, we'll pay for a tank every 4 years.

Here is a link to the current hot water tank model that we have installed in our home: http://www.gsw-wh.com/downloads/PDF/GPVENV0509.pdf

I should also mention that we planned to stay in our home for at least 8 more years so the only issue I can see with buying out the tank is if a part or the tank fails within 4 years.
16 replies
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2011
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Buy it out right!
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May 6, 2010
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We bought out our tank and couldn't be happier.
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Nov 2, 2005
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WFH
You should definitely own your WH.

You should also look at non-condensing units. For an average family your cost savings with this HE unit only amount to about $50 per year so it's hard to justify a sizable premium to stay with the same model.

Warranties are usually transferable if the unit remains at the original installation location but not sure about buyouts from rental companies.
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Feb 8, 2014
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How long is the warranty?
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Aug 4, 2010
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I researched some tankless options but would rather have a tank in the home vs one of the newer tankless models.
If you end up buying a new tank, it seems silly to keep a tank version vs. buying tankless.

With a tank, you're heating a big tank of water 24/7, whether you're using water or not.
With a tank, you have a big tank of water that is a potential flood should it rust/fail.
With a tank, you may run out of hot water.

Tankless will be cheaper long-term, safer, and just overall better. Only way I'd keep a tank is if you already have one and don't intend on replacing it. (My case)

I bought my home with an owned water tank. I never gave much thought about it, but now that I've read about rental tanks, I'm glad I own mine.
Member
Oct 4, 2006
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amace wrote: If you end up buying a new tank, it seems silly to keep a tank version vs. buying tankless.

With a tank, you're heating a big tank of water 24/7, whether you're using water or not.
With a tank, you have a big tank of water that is a potential flood should it rust/fail.
With a tank, you may run out of hot water.

Tankless will be cheaper long-term, safer, and just overall better. Only way I'd keep a tank is if you already have one and don't intend on replacing it. (My case)

I bought my home with an owned water tank. I never gave much thought about it, but now that I've read about rental tanks, I'm glad I own mine.
+1 to this... I've been researching hot water options and it seems tankless is a no brainer especially with the rebates available now (at least in BC) for tankless heaters.
Member
Jul 14, 2012
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Hamilton
dirtmover wrote: You should definitely own your WH.

You should also look at non-condensing units. For an average family your cost savings with this HE unit only amount to about $50 per year so it's hard to justify a sizable premium to stay with the same model.

Warranties are usually transferable if the unit remains at the original installation location but not sure about buyouts from rental companies.
More often than not, the High Eff. condensing tanks are in the house for a reason, is this case it's fairly safe to assume he has a hydronic heating system, and the 76,000btu water heater is there to keep up with the demand for heat in the winter while still supplying hot water.

That being said, if the OP is looking for a cheaper option GSW does make a 65,000btu non-condensing unit that should keep up with demand, however I find the overall quality has dropped on the tanks since they moved to the newest model which is 62,000btu.
jramnari wrote: I called Reliance to see what our options are and we can buy out our current tank for roughly $2000, or pay a few fee's to remove/return our current tank and go buy/install our own. I did some research to try to find how much our current tank sells for but could not find a price online for a tank that closely resembles the one we currently have. I researched some tankless options but would rather have a tank in the home vs one of the newer tankless models.

I should also mention that we planned to stay in our home for at least 8 more years so the only issue I can see with buying out the tank is if a part or the tank fails within 4 years.
You should be able to find your tank at a wholesaler (try your local Wolseley branch, have the model number handy and just call them.)

IF you decide to go tankless, and you do have a hydronic heating system, then make sure the tankless is rated for heating as not all of them are.

From my experience the current tank you have usually last about 7-10 years.
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Feb 8, 2014
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Tankless is not the godsend people say it is, it needs more maintenance, its more failure prone, it costs a lot more, if people take longer showers it never ends leading to more water and gas use then the tank would have, the flow rates are low, you need enough flow to get it going, and many systems suffer from whats called the cold water sandwich.

That said if you don't use tank draining showers and don't mind the higher lifetime costs then it will reduce your gas use.
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Jul 17, 2009
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Quentin5 wrote: Tankless is not the godsend people say it is, it needs more maintenance, its more failure prone, it costs a lot more, if people take longer showers it never ends leading to more water and gas use then the tank would have, the flow rates are low, you need enough flow to get it going, and many systems suffer from whats called the cold water sandwich.

That said if you don't use tank draining showers and don't mind the higher lifetime costs then it will reduce your gas use.
doesn't heating a shower's worth of water use less gas to heat it than keeping 50 gallons warm during the day or your next shower?
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veryboredguy wrote: doesn't heating a shower's worth of water use less gas to heat it than keeping 50 gallons warm during the day or your next shower?
I would hope not, that means all tanks are completely uninsulated which is not correct. You can buy more insulation for a tank but they are not straight metal cans, all modern tanks should have insulation between the metal shell and the actual tank inside.
Water has a very heat capacity, i believe its one of the highest heat capacity liquids.
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i know its insulated but if it has to heat it up once more as its waiting in the tank woudnt that use more as than a tankless? its not like it can be heated to 50 (or whatever ) and stay at that temp for 12 hours
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veryboredguy wrote: i know its insulated but if it has to heat it up once more as its waiting in the tank woudnt that use more as than a tankless? its not like it can be heated to 50 (or whatever ) and stay at that temp for 12 hours
See if you can find data online, but i've calculated that it takes about 1m3 to heat cold water in my tank in winter if i drain it from a shower, in summer i would guess about 0.5-0.75m3 (inlet water temp is higher), and i used about 1-1.25m3 of gas a day this summer (gas stove as well as gas water heater) so it does not seem i've used more gas to keep the water warm then to just heat it.

My data is not nice and perfect so do try to find some, but even if your correct the tankless will cost more over its lifetime then a water tank will, in purchase price and maintenance, so while you will save gas if you take showers that are less then a tank from a cost perspective the tank is so far winning. Not to say better tankless cant come out in future and i hope they do.

Also keep in mind it does not wait till the water is down to room temp to heat up, it will start again if when the water hits a set point which may be 5 degrees below the temp you have set it to (i have no idea the actual temp it reheats at, that you have to look up)
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Aug 27, 2009
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veryboredguy wrote: doesn't heating a shower's worth of water use less gas to heat it than keeping 50 gallons warm during the day or your next shower?
A typical tank WH loses about 30W of energy to the surroundings, so during the heating season that energy goes into heating your home and is not really lost, albeit generated at an efficiency of about 60% vs >90% from your furnace. Of course that works against you if the AC is on.

A tankless WH requires electricity to run and/or just be on standby. I don't know how much but I know my furnace control board requires 25-30W on standby. That heat also goes into the house but is generated with electricity which is multiples more costly than gas.
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RETD wrote: A typical tank WH loses about 30W of energy to the surroundings, so during the heating season that energy goes into heating your home and is not really lost, albeit generated at an efficiency of about 60% vs >90% from your furnace. Of course that works against you if the AC is on.

A tankless WH requires electricity to run and/or just be on standby. I don't know how much but I know my furnace control board requires 25-30W on standby. That heat also goes into the house but is generated with electricity which is multiples more costly than gas.
I wondered about furnace standby consumption, i was planning on e-mailing the company of my new furnace to find out (then forgot to do so), 25-30W is more then i would expect
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Oct 4, 2008
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Android412 wrote: More often than not, the High Eff. condensing tanks are in the house for a reason, is this case it's fairly safe to assume he has a hydronic heating system, and the 76,000btu water heater is there to keep up with the demand for heat in the winter while still supplying hot water.
I got the same high efficiency condensing tank for a new construction as well. It was not for hydronic heating but for Enegry Star Home certification.

I replaced it with a tankless heater and it saved some footage. No problem to have 3 applications at the same time in Ottawa last winter.
Jr. Member
Jul 10, 2007
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Ottawa
maho wrote: I got the same high efficiency condensing tank for a new construction as well. It was not for hydronic heating but for Enegry Star Home certification.

I replaced it with a tankless heater and it saved some footage. No problem to have 3 applications at the same time in Ottawa last winter.
I wonder if you were with the same builder. I'm with Mattamy in Half Moon Bay.

My water tank also isn't used for hydronic heating but was told that it was installed for the Energy Star Home Certification. The tank works really well for me but someone mentioned in a previous post that a non-condensing unit on average only costs $50 more a year. I haven't crunched any of the numbers for my household but there are only 3 people in my home and no kids. None of us take long showers or use that much hot water but kids are coming into the picture sometime soon so I don't want to commit to a lower efficiency tank and then have to pay a lot more on gas charges in the future.

I personally didn't want to go with a tankless model for a variety of reasons of which I'm sure a lot of people have a debate against my reasoning but going back to the original question that I posted, I'll go ahead and buy-out of the rental contract.

Thanks to everyone that replied with their input. I'm going to be doing some research on various tank models to figure out if I'm better off buying the current $2000 condensing tank that I have or a lower efficiency one at a cheaper price.

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