tankless water heater recommendation

[DriftingDrew]

Has anyone here tried one of these Vent-Free, Low-Pressure, Tankless Hot Water Heaters? I'm seeing one by Excel at Camping World and on Amazon (currently 4.5 stars with 33 reviews) around $200. Sounds like it addresses a lot of the issues in this thread, but would love to hear from an Airstreamer with experience. Thanks!

[rmkrum]

I have a PrecisionTemp 500 series. I love it, but it was by no means only $200. It burns propane only plus 12 volt for the control. It’s a true tankless in that as long as you have water flow and propane, the water is hot..,

[Adventure.AS]

Originally Posted by DriftingDrew

Has anyone here tried one of these Vent-Free, Low-Pressure, Tankless Hot Water Heaters? I'm seeing one by Excel at Camping World and on Amazon (currently 4.5 stars with 33 reviews) around $200. Sounds like it addresses a lot of the issues in this thread, but would love to hear from an Airstreamer with experience. Thanks!

One problem with a 'vent free' water heater (or a catalytic heater) is that they put a lot of water vapour into a trailer (not to mention depleting oxygen and adding CO2.) This wouldn't be an issue in a house with so much more air volume to dilute the combustion by products.

[rmkrum]

Only thing about the Excel that worries me is that it’s designed to vent directly into the living space. I don’t like dumping a lot of heat into my AS in the summer, and despite a low oxygen shut off system, I am fussy about sharing my breathing air with a fairly high air consuming appliance. If this was designed to get air and vent outside, I’d be inclined to look
Into it more. I also don’t see freeze protection like the PrecisionTemp unit. As long as that one has power and propane, it acts to protect the electronics and piping from low temps.

[nickclifford]

I love the Precision temp on-demand heater, hard to beat with full hook ups but if boon docking I think an old style tank might be better. Seems like you have to run quite a bit of water before hot comes through. Haven't done that yet, but think I'd catch water in a bucket and pour back into tank. How that compares with a tank style, no clue. If you want hot water, you still gotta push the cold out first. The precision temp fires up immediately though. It's so nice to have unlimited hot showers with 4 of us ...
the swap out was fairly easy, no cutting was needed.

[rmkrum]

I had to trim the top of my opening about 3/8 if an inch to get the PrecisionTemp unit in the existing Atwood opening. Other than that, it works great. Even on pump and fresh tank it’s not bad on water consumption if you take a quick shower.

One thing I did was to tape up all the seams in the enclosure with metal HVAC duct tape. I felt the gaps and slots were an air infiltration point, and since the heater box is in the bottom of my wardrobe closet I didn’t waft air and/or exhaust from the heater coming in...

[learthman]

Is there a reason why people dont consider using home tankless units? Like Noritz or Rinnai versus an RV specific tankless. We've stripped out the inside of our trailer so we dont need the tankless to fit into an already set space - we have flexibility on the size of the unit.

[rmkrum]

Big, bulky, way too much capacity, need 120 volt AC power to even run. Venting is a problem. We have a Bosch at home and love it, but went with a PrecisionTemp for the Airstream because it’s designed for RV use and only needs 12 volt DC power to work. Even used the same switch as the old tank tyoe Atwood.