Frisky and Tankless

Tarr, since you asked . . .

According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, frisky is an adjective meaning, “playful and full of energy.”

I know that in common usage frisky usually has a sexual connotation, but I like (mis)using it anyhow. In part, I just like shocking people. And, it is also my shorthand way of saying that I’m feeling pretty good so let’s jump right in and start a potentially disastrous project before I change my mind.


The tankless water heater we have is a Titan. If you’d like more information on them, you can follow this link to their website. We bought ours off of eBay two-some-odd years ago. We bought the 120 volt version (N-120) which is the most powerful one they sell. According to the website, the unit takes 54 Amps of power if you have it on the highest (hottest) settings possible. I can’t remember for sure, but I believe Julian Electric has it hooked to a 60 Amp breaker of its own.

The 120 volt model is supposed to provide enough hot water to supply a kitchen and two 3-fixture bathrooms. The Devil Queen has a sprawling layout and three bathrooms so we have two separate hot water systems. The tankless heater we connected over the weekend supplies hot water to the master bathroom (two sinks, clawfoot tub, and toilet) and the hall bathroom (shower, sink, and toilet). The other system supplies the mudroom/laundry/bath (washer, hot-tub, sink, and toilet) and the kitchen (sink and dishwasher).

Tarr, in regard to your question about the hot tub, I'm not anticipating any problems in having enough hot water to fill it. Moreover, our tub has a heating/recirculating feature, so it should keep the water warm on its own once filled.

So far we’ve been very pleased with the heater’s performance. However, since we’re only running the hot water to the clawfoot tub right now, it’s not like we’ve pushed it to its limit. One thing we’ve noticed is that the water gets hotter the longer you run it unlike a traditional water heater which starts running lukewarm after a while (well, our old one did).

Here is a picture of the heater we turned on this weekend (note the devilish orange glow of the "stand-by" light).

If you're wondering about the exposed framing, we haven't drywalled this wall yet. We want to make sure the shower plumbing (the two pvc pipes behind the heater) works before we close it up.

I should mention that we’ve deviated some from the manufacture’s installation guidelines. It seems to work, but I thought you might want to know if you’re considering installing one. The heaters need no less than 18 inches of hard copper piping run from both the cold water supply side and the hot water out let. The reason for this is that the heater gets too hot for CPVC/PVC piping. I don’t know if the CPVC/PVC would melt, but, at the very least, it would get brittle and break (I think).

While we used copper, we ended up using soft copper instead of hard copper (long story). The copper pipe is connected to the heater with a brass compression fitting. Basically, put the brass “collar” on the copper pipe, insert pipe into brass nipple, slide bolt into place, and tighten. The nut will tighten (compress) the collar around the pipe creating what should be a waterproof seal.

Since the soft copper has more give than the hard, we gave the nut a few more twists than the directions called for. Again, this seems to have worked, but I don’t feel that we’ve fully tested it. Time and continuous use will be the real test. On that note I might mention that I don’t much care for it being in my master bedroom closet, but it is the lesser of many evils.

If anyone has questions regarding the heater, please let me know and I’ll try to answer them for you.