Long story short – would you ever suggest electric tankless water heaters to give hot water for two sinks?

And if you want the story – having just blown the fourth element in my hot water tank in as many years, I’m looking at options. I’m getting a little tired of regularly replacing elements. The last time the plumber really struggled to get the old element out, as if it had fused itself in, and buckled the tank around the fitting.

Thankfully the tank held, but I’m not looking forward to the risk of having to replace it as it’s in a remarkably stupid place. It’s situated right up against the ceiling, there’s no access to the tank from above (I’d have to dig through the floor of the flat above), and there’s another false ceiling built in front of it halfway down the tank. There would be no way to get a new tank in there without removing a fair chunk of the false ceiling.

There is no bath in the premises, just a shower cubicle and the electric shower heats its own water. This means it’s only a hot water supply to the bathroom and kitchen sink that’s needed. Oh, and there’s no gas supply.

So if there’s going to be a chance of major reworks going on, I was wondering at alternatives and these tankless heaters have been suggested as a possibility. Googling suggests they’re nice and small, but expensive to install, but cheaper to run, but pretty useless.

My question is, are they still expensive to install and useless when only being used for a couple of sinks?

Thanks in advance.

I’ve no idea how much they cost to run but my mother had one installed and found it to be excellent. TBH, I was surprised at how hot the water was so quickly, even when running a the tap full on.

Do you mean a zip instantaneous water heater? I’ve fitted a few and found the flow rate to be poor, especially when the weather was cold.
Unless you got one that was bigger than 6kw but you could be looking at rewiring that circuit with bigger cable.

Thanks for the replies guys. Yes, it’s the Zip instantaneous type things I’m wondering about.

We have small ones installed where I work. They’re about the size of a bag of sugar and the output is at best okay. Don’t know how old they are but thought that if there’s slightly newer/larger ones out there then they could potentially offer more heat per flow rate.

I think zip do a 6kw version but you’d have to install a dedicated circuit for it and even then I wasn’t that impressed with them.
If you wanted the water hot then the flow rate would drop quite a bit.They were fitted in shops just to fill buckets to clean the floor,they would drive me nuts but everyone has their own opinion of what is acceptable.

Why are your elements going? The instantaneous heaters are exactly the same but wih less storage and a bigger element. If it’s a hard water problem you will only make it worse. Water softener maybe?