It was inevitable, just a matter of when.
Saturday night our water heater busted, sizzling, leaking water, yielding it inoperable. <ugh!>
It's oil fired, 26 years old (!), came with the house. Doesn't owe us anything, just bad timing, without (ample) warning.
Looked into replacement ($$$$, whaaat?) hmm, how about something else...
On-demand gas water heaters are all the rage, but... we don't have gas in the street here. An electric on-demand water heater, suitable for our wants/needs hogs around 24kW! That's 100 Amp draw, ouch!
Our service panel is 200A, aside from customary smaller loads, we have some heavy users on it already:
You get the picture, there is no 100A reserve for an on-demand electric water heater of decent capacity.
Putting that extra 80-100A on-demand user on there would surely be pushing it at times in Winter (i.e., when the acc. heating coil kicks in).
We're also pretty much out of spaces in the panel, so I'd need to combine or "tandem breaker" a few circuits to open up more slots. Or install a subpanel to feed a new o-d water heater (pig!).
Adding a second 200A service or converting to a larger (400A) one is pretty much out of the question at this time, but would surely be more future proof!
Suggestions?
Saturday night our water heater busted, sizzling, leaking water, yielding it inoperable. <ugh!>
It's oil fired, 26 years old (!), came with the house. Doesn't owe us anything, just bad timing, without (ample) warning.
Looked into replacement ($$$$, whaaat?) hmm, how about something else...
On-demand gas water heaters are all the rage, but... we don't have gas in the street here. An electric on-demand water heater, suitable for our wants/needs hogs around 24kW! That's 100 Amp draw, ouch!
Our service panel is 200A, aside from customary smaller loads, we have some heavy users on it already:
- Heat pump (external) unit (20-40A)
- Air handler's "accessory" heating coil that kicks on in Winter when temps drop below 30F and the heat pump can't keep up. (70A)! It barely comes on since we keep ambient temps relatively low and steady.
- Stove/oven (20-40A)
- Induction plate (15A)
- Clothes dryer (20-30A), sparsely used.
- Hot tub (30-50A) we're definitely installing this year.
You get the picture, there is no 100A reserve for an on-demand electric water heater of decent capacity.
Putting that extra 80-100A on-demand user on there would surely be pushing it at times in Winter (i.e., when the acc. heating coil kicks in).
We're also pretty much out of spaces in the panel, so I'd need to combine or "tandem breaker" a few circuits to open up more slots. Or install a subpanel to feed a new o-d water heater (pig!).
Adding a second 200A service or converting to a larger (400A) one is pretty much out of the question at this time, but would surely be more future proof!
Suggestions?