Water heater location

[DT Rutledge]

I'm shopping for water heaters. I have a 37' Thomas RE with a basement and there isn't enough room for most rv sized tankless units. I'm thinking a solution would be to use flexible water and gas lines so the WH could be hung on the outside of the bus while camping and stowed away when not in use. This would solve the problem with exhaust venting. Anybody see any issues with this?

 

[Tango-SKO]

There are now a few interior units that are "ventless". As I recall, one is named Excel(?).

 

[DT Rutledge]

There are now a few interior units that are "ventless". As I recall, one is named Excel(?).

Even the indoor ventless models need upper clearance, and I'm not comfortable having the top of the WH so close to the floor of the bus.

 

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

There are small point of use units out there.
One for each fixture that you need hot water at or one can handle multiple fixtures if you don't exceed its flow rating by trying to use two fixtures at the same time.
Like a shower and fill the kitchen sink.
Good luck

 

[CaptSquid]

Do like I did. I purchased a 30 liter German boiler. Low profile, definitely demand.

 

[toomanydogs]

Can you post which one you bought?

 

[CaptSquid]

30 liter boiler NOTE: this is a 220 VAC device.

 

[Willie_McCoy]

I'm shopping for water heaters. I have a 37' Thomas RE with a basement and there isn't enough room for most rv sized tankless units. I'm thinking a solution would be to use flexible water and gas lines so the WH could be hung on the outside of the bus while camping and stowed away when not in use. This would solve the problem with exhaust venting. Anybody see any issues with this?

This is definitely a workable option, keep in mind the flow rate of the fixture you plan to use (shower) and the temp of the incoming water supply, and make sure that the heater you choose is big enough to meet you needs. Look for the user manual or installation guide to see what its temp rise is at a given flow rate. Most of the advertising for these heaters is at a almost unusably low flow, so you need to do some homework.

 

[DT Rutledge]

This is definitely a workable option, keep in mind the flow rate of the fixture you plan to use (shower) and the temp of the incoming water supply, and make sure that the heater you choose is big enough to meet you needs. Look for the user manual or installation guide to see what its temp rise is at a given flow rate. Most of the advertising for these heaters is at a almost unusably low flow, so you need to do some homework.

Solid advice. Thank you.

 

[Doktari]

Interesting idea. I have one of the little hang on the wall 4 gallon 120 volt electric water heaters attached to scrap of plywood. I can hang it anywhere. A little Suitcase generator heats a shower in fairly quickly. I’m going to rig a solid state relay on my solar and divert Surplus energy to it.
If you get a fully modulating on demand gas fueled water heater you can run preheated water into it. If you supply a un modulated on demand water heater with warm water it gets too hot. Maybe a undersized unit would work great but not when one only has cold water.
Maybe you can use quick connect fittings on your outdoor unit?

 

[Sleddgracer]

a few years back I was expecting a group of campers - my house was not capable of supplying the needs of the several dozen people expected, so I used some scavenged decking to put a floor in an open sided horse shelter, made a counter out of some of the excess flooring, installed a propane cook stove ( looked like any household kitchen range ) so people could have a place to cook ( fire season prohibited any open fires ) and my piece d' resistance was an outdoor shower, made from a 10" diameter pipe, 5' long, sitting several inches up from a steel platform as it's base - inside the big pipe I put a coil of copper 1/2" bendable tubing - with hose connections on both ends - cold water went into the lower connection and hot water out the top one, after being heated with a tiger torch -talk about supplying LOTS of hot water!!! - lol - had to be careful that the tiger torch was turned down low and that the cold water was turned on before the hot water - in the evening we cooked s'mores in a 'campfire using an old 45 gal ( 50 gal US ) barrel with a screened opening on one side, a chimney out of the top of the barrel, with a screen over the top of the chimney so we could conform to the no open fire laws - real hillbilly, but it all worked as designed and everyone enjoyed themselves, ( including one of the horses that liked to hang out in the ( fly free ) smoke from the fire - lol