okie boarder's house

[Okie Boarder]

Playing around with siding texture and stone colors a little bit to see what we think. I think we want to find stone that is a bit more colorful, maybe do the garage doors in a black or blackwash look and maybe do some color shade variation on the gable peaks and the porches. Full plan set is complete and one contractor already bid...waiting for the rest so we can decide who we want to go with.

[Okie Boarder]

So, we sat down with the contractor last night to finalize and approve plans and make any last minute changes for his bid. During that conversation, we talked about several thoughts on options. Regarding the water heater situation, we spoke in more detail of costs and options. He said that with our 4 bathroom set up and hot water needs, the tankless configuration costs about $1100 in equipment and around $5-6k in additional electrical and plumbing costs. We discussed another alternative to the typical 40 gallon water heater in most houses and that is a smaller tank configured with a recirculator. Have any of you had much experience with this? He's installed them in several houses and said he plans to do the same in his own house whenever his standard water heater decides to go out.

[Swamplandkarl]

I installed the tankless heater in my home myself, love it and would never go back to a tank type heater.
not sure why he is telling you 5-6k for electrical and plumbing sounds a little fishy to me as all it takes is a 110v outlet if it is a gas or LP gas heater and a gas line, now if it is 220v electric tankless heater it is a little more expensive for the electrical but nowhere near 5-6k...there is no more plumbing for tankless verses tank type heaters.
I ran into this when I installed mine, this is the reason I ended up doing it myself.
I put in a rinnai gas tankless was about 1800 bucks for everything I needed, plumbing contractors wanted to charge me $7500.00, and to think they should be able to buy for less that what I can buy for...

On the heater with recirculation system that is what I tossed out, they work fine when they work but don't last long and expensive to repair, there are to many working parts to it IMO....

Good luck on your build.