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New water heater

Right now my house is all electric but with my water heater slowly going bad, I have decided to add a gas tankless water heater. The rep from Piedmont Natural Gas came out and said if I added a fireplace connection for gas logs as well as the water heater install, they would run the 160' line into the house for free.

I got the quote to purchase, install, and take away my old water heater and its $2950. I looked at the Rinnai RL94E online and it looks like its about $1100. $1850 to run lines around to water heater and fireplace as well as install water heater seems high to me, but since I don't have natural gas anyway is there any other recourse?
 
DeacWatcher said:
Right now my house is all electric but with my water heater slowly going bad, I have decided to add a gas tankless water heater. The rep from Piedmont Natural Gas came out and said if I added a fireplace connection for gas logs as well as the water heater install, they would run the 160' line into the house for free.

I got the quote to purchase, install, and take away my old water heater and its $2950. I looked at the Rinnai RL94E online and it looks like its about $1100. $1850 to run lines around to water heater and fireplace as well as install water heater seems high to me, but since I don't have natural gas anyway is there any other recourse?
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I am no expert on this, but I do have a lot of natural gas appliances and can tell you there's quite a bit of infrastructure necessary to get it into your house if it's not there already. They will have to dig a trench to the street, tap into the gas line, bring the line to your wall, install a regulator (which is a pretty substantial piece of equipment) on the outside of your house, then run lines from the regulator through your walls etc. to your logs and heater. I'm betting they'll bring out 2-3 guys and a ditch digger machine, and spend at least a day working to get all that done. I don't know if 1850 is the right price or not but it doesn't offend my conscience, assuming it includes both labor and materials.
 
I paid a similar price two remove two existing gas heat tanks and install the rinnai, and I already had natural gas at the house. Tankless heaters also have to be vented like a dryer, so in my case they had to break through brick to install the vent.

Don't let them install the tankless on the outside of the house. They can freeze.
 
Well its $2950 total, I just know the water heater itself runs about $1100. I plan to do it anyway as I want gas in the house and it will have to help resale value should I ever move.

What size pipe will they use? Is there a standard?
 
If they run a grand you gotta figure some mark up/profit on that.. Sounds like a decent deal.. Shit is always more expensive than you think...
 
DeacWatcher said:
Well its $2950 total, I just know the water heater itself runs about $1100. I plan to do it anyway as I want gas in the house and it will have to help resale value should I ever move.

What size pipe will they use? Is there a standard?
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i don't know the exact size (I think the right word is "gauge") but it's a pretty small pipe. Probably about 1/2 or 3/4 inch inside the house. Don't know how big the pipe from the street is, but I can't imagine it's very large.
 
BacktoBack said:
If they run a grand you gotta figure some mark up/profit on that.. Sounds like a decent deal.. Shit is always more expensive than you think...
Click to expand...

not much. If they bring out two guys at 10/hour and they work all day, that's $1600 in personnel costs right there, and I bet they pay those guys more than $10/hour. Plus the cost of the pipe (he said 160 feet of copper pipe, which is not cheap) and the regulator. They are counting on making the money on the monthly gas payment, not that $1850 install.

The more I think about it the more I think 1850 is a pretty good price for the install.
 
Rheem/Rudd would be my choice. State, American and A.O. Smith are all made by the same company and neither option are a bad choice.
 
If going tankless, go with a Rinnai over Bosch.
 
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