I am a
wild and meandering kinda guy..
I will be meandering over to Home Depot early this week to see about the tank. (and other hardware).
Going with the GE 40 gallon, since it cost less and should have a little less loss compared to the 50 gal.
I'm not going to add-on to my oil boiler, because it's really old.
I've already had a major repair, due to rust..
IIRC, the welder charged me around $400 for this job.
(took this pic during the pressure test. It leaked).
Rust can happen in areas where you can't see. What worries me now is, is the bottom plate.
If it starts leaking down there, I'll have to uninstall the whole unit and flip it
on it's side to cut out the bad section and weld on a new plate..
That would leave us without any hot water for a long time.. (I work very slow).
So, having two HW heaters is better than one.. If one is really old..
Not sure how the R22 copper tube will loop inside a regular water heater tank,
in the artist conception pics, it's nice loops.. In real life, it might be messy.
If the area has a lot of square corners in it, you might try having a bit of
curve in the copper as you push it in. (If that's possible).
Even a little curve might allow it to feed around in somewhat of a loop,
instead of just jamming up, folding over and kinking up.. (cutting off R22 flow)..
If that happens to me, my backup plan is to use the HX I've already purchased for this ASHP HW project..