Found a great deal on a tankless water heater
 

There are a few quirks, but nothing I can't live with or fix. First off, it is setup for propane. I checked Bosch's website and thats a really easy fix. A new natural gas jet is only about $5. Also, last year the owner had the coils freeze and on it. His wood stove was sucking so much air through the house, it was bringing cold air down the water heater's flue. He had it fixed up and has been using it all spring and summer. The last thing is it does use a pilot light instead of electronic ignition. That kind of stinks, but for the price I can't argue.

Anyway, I should be picking it up tomorrow.


Propane hot water heater (tankless)

As I figured out after a little more digging on Bosch's website, it looks like I"ll need a new jet and a new pressure regulator. The jet does only cost a few dollars, but the regulator looks like it'll be closer to $50.

Does anyone have any experience converting something like this?

Here is a pic of the unit after I brought it into the garage. Its about 18"x30"x9".

I believe I have the spot picked out for it in the basement. However, I won't be installing it right away because the owner does have some flue pieces that he said he would give me when he gets back into town in a month or so.

http://ecorenovator.org/pictures/water heater 001.JPG

Cool. sounds like a decent deal, even will the work needed. let me/us know how it goes.

I'll be stopping by the home improvement store on the way home tonight to order the natural gas parts for it.

I was able to dig up a schematic of the water heater off of Bosch's site. Petty handy. It looks like I'll pretty much be taking the entire thing apart. The gas injector is #13 on the diagram, and the regulator is the thing right in the middle with the two knobs on it.

Thankfully, it doesn't look overly complex so it should be a relatively quick change over.

http://ecorenovator.org/pictures/water heater 002.jpg

Well, the LP to NG conversion was short lived. I found out I can't get the parts locally, so I looked online. The jet is $6, the regulator is $48, and there is a seperate burner for it too, and that is $110. To make a long story short, I did some searching to see how much these heaters are going for and ended up finding one on ebay that was selling for $100 plus $45 for shipping. Well, I can't retrofit mine for that much, so I put in a bid an won. The total came to $183 shipped.

So, anyone need an LP hot water heater? :)

This weekend I was able to offload the LP heater to a guy running an electric tank water heater. It should cut his monthly bill down by quite a bit!

The regulator should have a spacer that gets removed and flipped over to convert that to natural gas.
before you install a used water heater like this, flush out the lime scale, this needs to be done every two to three years depending on how hard your water is, if you don't do this the flow rate will drop, the efficiency of it will drop dramatically and the chances of you over heating the unit will increase, a plumbing shop should be able to get you a flush kit.

How do you recommend flushing the unit out?