We bought our home three years ago and unfortunately we are finding some of the upgrades the previous owners did while on the surface looked awesome are turning out to be crap. They installed a tankless water heater in 2017 but we had a repairman come out and he said there are several things wrong with it and it's a brand that went belly up in 2018 so the warranty is null etc.
We had to get a new one and we opted for a tankless one again but it's costing roughly ten grand which seems outrageously expensive to me even for a regular size tankless. My better half doesn't seem to think it's too much. Am I wrong? I looked into cost for this and I'm finding like $4000 on the HIGH end. Are we being duped?
I replaced mine myself in 2020 with a model I picked up from Menards. We only have one bathroom so I went with the in-stock model (you can order larger ones) and it's been fantastic.
The only tricky thing (I was unsure about) was routing the exhaust as we are on natural gas and I kept using that heat source. So I had to buy the expensive double-wall tubing kit, and hooked that up to the existing tank exhaust which runs up to my roof through an old chimney duct -- all the exposed part is the double-wall piping.
It took me about a full weekend and several trips to Menards to get all the correct fittings for the water hookups. I think the heater itself was $800. I have less than $2k into the system all-inclusive. (I see today the model I purchased runs ~$1200 before rebate)
If you're also using gas, make sure the diameter of the gas line you connect to the heater is the correct size.