EcoSmart ECO 11 Electric Tankless Water Heater, 13KW at 240 Volts with Patented Self Modulating Technology

So far, it appears to be reliable and does what it's supposed to... heat up water. Due to the rapidly rising costs of propane, I wanted a preheater for the propane tankless water heater to drastically reduce the propane usage, since that is the primary heavy user of LP. I sized the unit based upon 60A available where I needed it from the electric resistance backup heat [no longer used] on the HVAC heat pump next to the water heater, with lots of PV Solar on the farm for the energy. I had thought of solar hot water, but the ROI wasn't as good as using this unit to preheat the water, and this installation was an order of magnitude simpler. Seems to do the job of quickly heating the water to 120F, and then the LP tankless barely comes on to kick it up the last few degrees. Plus, if the propane unit has a problem, then I already have a hot water backup in place. As for installation, you see a few cheap Chinese manufacturing "shortcuts", such as the tiny cover screws and other hardware inside that is typically Chinese. Also, the inlet/outlet fittings are straight thread rather than NPT. They give you adapters with the unit, but being straight thread, you need lots of thread sealant to keep them from leaking. If you are using compression or straight-thread gasket sealed hoses, it won't be a problem, but my somewhat different application required other fittings. The unit is small, so will fit most anywhere, and is nice looking. The wattage of the unit, even without the LP tankless on, appears to be plenty for a 2.5 gpm shower. Now, as long as the unit holds up, it appears to be a good investment that accomplished what I bought it for.

We purchased this water heater based on comments here and like others, we agree that it is a great water heater.We are using it as a whole-house water heater replacing a sixty gallon tank that started leaking. We expected that there would be some adjustment in going tank-less and using an 11KW as a whole-house water heater, for example like not using other faucets while showering, etc., but we were willing to make that sacrifice because we were going to be saving money on the heater, and on electricity with the bonus of doing the right thing for the environment.Well, this heater exceeded expectations by a LOT. We keep it set at 110 degrees which makes for very hot shower but not scalding and no problems using other sinks at the same time. My wife told me she took a shower while the dishwasher was running and expected it to be "cool" but to her surprise there was no problem handling the dishwasher and shower at the same time. It has been about a month since we installed the water heater in our 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath house and we have forgotten that we are heating water on demand because there is no noticeable difference compared to when we had a sixty gallon tank.One of our showers is a double shower and I tried that out, no problem the heater handled both fine with no reduction in temperature. You should be aware our house is a Florida house so our city water comes in at around 68 degrees. If you had well water you will have different results as you will be heating much colder water. One other thing to note, if you take a bath you will want to crank the heater to higher temp, it is so easy with the knob and digital readout I taught my daughter to crank it before her bath so she can add extra hot water to "freshen" up her long and hot bath otherwise 110 degrees isn't hot enough to heat up a cooled bath do to rapid heat loss. You can buy the remote control for about forty bucks and adjust the heater setting from anywhere, or just keep your heater set to a higher temp. We like running it at 110 so that we have maximum energy savings and eliminate scalding risks.I highly recommend this heater, keep in mind that you need upgraded wiring, you will probably have 220 volt electric for your existing water heater but ours was only 30 amp and this one calls for 60 amp so that means getting MUCH thicker wire that is expensive and hard to pull. If your heater can be located close to the breaker box you will save money in wire and the hassle of pulling super thick wire. I bought wiring and breaker for 50amp by mistake and didn't notice until after the installation was finished. We must have never drawn more than 50 amps because the breaker has NEVER kicked even running two showers so I plan on keeping the 50 amp breaker as the wire we used is safe for only up to 50 amps and I'd need to replace the wire to even thicker.

It's surprisingly easy to install and works great. I'd anticipated a significant performance loss when switching from a traditional water heater to a tankless model, but this thing is awesome. Instead of using a low flow shower head I went with a pressure enhancing head, the thought being that why should I limit the flow of water before I had the chance to find out exactly what the capability of the heater is. If the heater wasn't capable of keeping up with the flow I could simply turn down the volume of water, and the pressure enhancing shower head would make it tolerable. As it turned out water pressure wasn't a problem. One neat thing about a tankless heater is that you no longer have to use cold water to bring down your hot water temperature to a tolerable level. If I want hot, but not scalp scalding hot, I simply turn the hot tap to full and I'm set. If I want crazy hot I turn the hot water volume down about 20 percent and I'm lobster red in no time. I'm saving money on the electric bill by not preheating water 24 hours a day, and I have unlimited hot water for when I wanna zombie out in the shower. If that's not a win - win I don't know what is.The only real downside to a 220 volt tankless heater is that because it pulls much more current than a standard water heater you will most likely need to upgrade your existing electrical wiring. The paperwork says that it needs 6 gauge wiring, the largest I had on-hand was 8 gauge. For my short wire run it turned out to be plenty. Even after a long shower the wire temp remains perfectly cool to the touch. I also had to upgrade the existing breaker to a 60 amp model. Changing a 220 breaker sounds intimidating, but it's extremely simple. There are only three wires from the water heater to deal with. The red and black wire go to the new breakers wire terminals (doesn't matter which goes to which terminal) and the ground wire goes to a ground lug inside the electrical panel. Study up on the components of your electrical panel and follow basic safety procedures and you'll be fine.The water connections are super simple. The heater comes with a choice of a compression fitting for copper pipe, or a threaded fitting for use with whatever type of plumbing pipe you're using. I used the threaded connector to connect pex piping. If you've never used pex, think plastic bendable water pipe that can be snapped together to whatever configuration you need using press fit connectors. Press fit connectors are also used to connect your new pex to existing copper pipes. Snip snip, click click, and you're good to go. Gone are the days of soldering copper pipes till you're mad at the world. Having installed this unit in just a couple of hours as a newbie, when and if this unit dies I feel confident that I can easily install its replacement in less than thirty minutes. A water heater that will pay for itself in less than a year, AND reduce future headaches? Why the heck not?