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Old 03-13-2023, 04:57 PM   #1
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tankless water heater question

I wanted to Sanitize my Seneca water lines and went looking for bypass valves for the tankless hot water heater but did not see any.
My water control panel does have a "Sanitize tank" setting (for fresh water tank) and "Winterize/Sanitize Lines" setting.
Am I to presume that the later setting bypasses the Hot Water Heater?
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Old 03-13-2023, 06:08 PM   #2
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Our 2015 36FK has the Girard tankless heater. How Jayco installed ours is with NO bypass plumbing. There is a Low-Point drain at the bottom of the water heater bay, but that is the extent of any winterizing or anything else. When you sanitize your water tank, just run some of the chlorinated water thru your hot water plumbing before you start the heater back up.
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Old 03-13-2023, 07:22 PM   #3
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What year of Seneca? Do you have the Nautilas panel with the red, blue, green and white knobs? If you do, supposably turning the red knob can by[ass the water heater BUT I have never verified this myself. I have just gotten all the parts to actually plumb a true bypass behind the water heater.
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Old 03-13-2023, 08:04 PM   #4
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What does the water heater manual say regarding winterizing? Some are different than the old tank types.
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Old 03-13-2023, 09:15 PM   #5
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Sorry Rustynuts, 2016 Seneca HJ.
Not the Nautilas panel; no colored switches.
I only have a low point drain for heater & didn't want to run bleach water into the heater for 12 hours. But member "Gritz Carlton" had a great suggestion by bleaching the fresh water tank then running that water thru the tank later.
I could Sanitize the lines via its setting then open the low point drain to the water heater to verify that only a little water runs out w/no bleach smell. Then later run water through it from fresh water tank when ready to dump the solution.

This forum always comes to the rescue.
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Old 03-19-2023, 09:44 PM   #6
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I have sanitized mine twice since I owned it for 2 years the only worry about the water heater is a bit of corrosion on the diode when sanitizing don't know I don't know if I'm right with this but as long as the hater is not functioning or shut off there should be no water supply to it I just fill up my fresh tank with the Clorox solution then run it to my faucets and let it sit for a while then dump it all and rinse with fresh
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Old 03-19-2023, 11:34 PM   #7
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I have been wanting to add a bypass to mine, to be able to properly sanitize and to isolate the water heater if there are issues. I had already added a waterproof marine cover to the bottom of the water heater compartment to do some insulating, but it wasn’t much fun working through that opening
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Old 03-23-2023, 04:11 PM   #8
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How does the tankless heater work out, thinking about replacing my 6 gal htr with one,
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Old 03-23-2023, 04:34 PM   #9
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How does the tankless heater work out, thinking about replacing my 6 gal htr with one,

We love our Truma and if you boondock a lot you can add a hot water circulation system and not waste any water. Even with a tanked heater you have to wait a while for hot water. I feel that the Girard water heater units have given tankless water heater a bad rap, some love them many hate them. The Truma is expensive but it is a hybrid water heater as it has a small mixing vessel that holds hot water and when called for hot water, it flows out of this vessel and then the instant heater water is mixed in with the water in the vessel so you are not waiting for water to actually get warm. The Truma Comfort model allows you to keep the vessel water at 41° or 108°. Ours has worked flawlessly for 5 years with no hot/cold temperature fluctuation.
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Old 03-24-2023, 09:58 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Rustynuts View Post
We love our Truma and if you boondock a lot you can add a hot water circulation system and not waste any water. Even with a tanked heater you have to wait a while for hot water. I feel that the Girard water heater units have given tankless water heater a bad rap, some love them many hate them.
Our 2015 came with the Girard Tankless heater. At first, we were in the "hate them" camp for about the first year or so, until we learned how to use it. Now we are in the "love them" camp and are using it today.

Things we learned:

The tankless heater has adjustments to how much heat it can apply to the water flowing thru the heat exchanger. When the source of your water supply (tank or city) is really cold, the heat input knob will need to be adjusted to compensate for the differences in cold water or cool water being heated. The same for summertime when your fresh water tank might get into the 70's F.

Other factors that will introduce uneven water temperatures are the water flow rate through the water heater heat exchanger, and that can get changed when the water pressure varies (RV parks are notorious about fluctuating water pressure). When the water flow increases, there is more water flowing thru the heat exchanger and the sensors are measuring the output temperature and applying an adjustment to the heat input, but the temperature change is already flowing down the pipe to the shower, and you can feel that difference in the shower. Simply, if you keep the water pressure and flow rate consistent, the temperature of the water stays consistent. That is why we fill our Fresh Tank up and run our showers on our water pump's consistent pressure.

Conserving water is also with some impact. When the hot water flow starts, it takes about 2-3 seconds to start the burner at the heat exchanger and about six seconds to deliver hot water at the heater output. Then it depends on which faucet you are using and how far it is from the heater before you will be getting hot water, that can be a lot of water wasted waiting for it to get hot. Adding a hot water recirculating line back to the water tank can conserve a lot of water waiting for the hot water to arrive.

Conserving water with army showers also introduces a challenge. When you shut off the shower to lather up, the heater stops as it no longer senses water flow. When you restart the water to rinse, you are going to get the hot water in the pipes at first, but a sudden burst of cold water will follow that was in the heater start up cycle. We just point the shower nozzle away for those few seconds and resume our shower.

If you are not needing to conserve water (in a place with a water supply) you can take a continuous shower at a steady temperature for as long as you have water, propane and grey water capacity. Most of our travels are running on boondocking stops, and we have adapted to the Girard nicely. It also is worth noting that this water heater uses very little propane and is awesome in freezing weather. It has a built-in temperature monitoring feature that will keep the water heater from freezing in even the coldest weather. (We have spent weeks in our Seneca at +5F at nightly low temps taking a shower every day in a Minnesota Rv park)
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Old 03-29-2023, 07:07 PM   #11
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I'm puzzled...
If a WH bypass is to avoid filling your HW tank (with anti-freeze or whatever), and you have no tank, what would the WH bypass do in a tankless heater?
Something to ponder.
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Old 03-29-2023, 08:52 PM   #12
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I'm puzzled...
If a WH bypass is to avoid filling your HW tank (with anti-freeze or whatever), and you have no tank, what would the WH bypass do in a tankless heater?
Something to ponder.
I have a Truma WH, which is a hybrid instant water heater with a small “mixing vessel” (tank) and holds about 1 liter of water that it maintains at 108 degrees and mixes this with the instant heated water so you don’t get any cold surge of water. The manual specifically says NOT to winterize and must use a bypass, which Jayco didn’t install. There is a single point drain that drains the entire unit in about 15 seconds.
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Old 03-29-2023, 10:07 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rustynuts View Post
I have a Truma WH, which is a hybrid instant water heater with a small “mixing vessel” (tank) and holds about 1 liter of water that it maintains at 108 degrees and mixes this with the instant heated water so you don’t get any cold surge of water. The manual specifically says NOT to winterize and must use a bypass, which Jayco didn’t install. There is a single point drain that drains the entire unit in about 15 seconds.
Thanks Brian!
Strange Jayco didn't...
Aluminum or steel tank 'mixing vessel'?
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Old 03-29-2023, 10:26 PM   #14
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Thanks Brian!
Strange Jayco didn't...
Aluminum or steel tank 'mixing vessel'?
The small tank is plastic.
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Old 03-29-2023, 11:24 PM   #15
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On my 2018 m2 the truma is bypassed by turning the red valve if the unit is full of water. The problem is there is no check valve in the line coming out of the unit so if you have drained the truma the water can back feed into the unit. Also if you do winterize the lines first and then drain the Truma sanitizing solution will flow into the unit. I added two shutoff valves in the wet bay before I had my unit upgraded to the comfort unit as the basic unit was not freeze protected. I still use these when I am not going to use the unit for a few weeks and it is going to be below zero. I shut the valves and drain the truma via the yellow dump valve on the unit. Drawing of my piping using the winterize function.
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Old 04-10-2023, 04:51 AM   #16
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Gerard GSWH-2 issue

I have the tankless Gerard and my hot water will not turn on unless I turn on 1 faucet and the shower…..
I thought it was the flow sensor….. so I changed it….. it made no difference.
I’m on city water…..
Any ideals ?
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Old 04-10-2023, 08:20 AM   #17
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When was your last descaling of the unit. If scale is building up the amount of water flowing through the unit will be reduced. Aside from that you can do a few flow rate tests, open only the hot water valve on a sink or shower and measure the flow rate. You need at least .8 gallons a minute for the unit to fire up. if you don't have that you will need to determine the cause. I believe on the back of some of the Girard unit there is a water control valve on the infeed cold water line, that can be adjusted to allow more flow. I found a service manual on line by searching for Girard tankless heater service manual. rvupgrade store has it available to look at.
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Old 04-10-2023, 08:45 AM   #18
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I have the tankless Gerard and my hot water will not turn on unless I turn on 1 faucet and the shower…..
I thought it was the flow sensor….. so I changed it….. it made no difference.
I’m on city water…..
Any ideals ?
Check your strainers in the faucet and shower head. Also check strainers on the inlet hose connection.
Does it work ok on the water pump?
Check flow at spigot supply at pedestal.
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Old 04-30-2023, 08:16 AM   #19
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On-Demand Water Heaters

We purchased a 2022 Jayco Eagle 317rlok. We want to replace the 6gl water heater with an on-demand that needs no modifications (cutting the opening to accommodate one). The dealership mentioned Jayco was adding the Suburban or Furrion model but, didn't mention the model numbers. I've read on the Jayco Forum that the Truma Comfort or Aquago work great. Could you please share your opinion. Thank in advance.
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Old 04-30-2023, 09:09 AM   #20
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This will be a hot topic as people either love them or hate them, I have a Truma AquaGo comfort model that we love. The comfort model is hybrid unit in that there is a small tank on the unit that will keep the unit at 110'f all the time so when you start up there is hot water as soon as the pipes can deliver it. Other units can take awhile to heat up and thus people complain that they take too much time and water to get to temperature. I have added a recirculation loop on my unit so that prior to using the hot water I press a button and the unit runs a gallon of water from the heater to the fresh water tank so that after this cycle completes we can have instant hot water at the sink or at the shower.

The main issue with on demand units is the large inflow required to get the sensors to turn on, Sometimes due to pump, water supply or valving issues in some peoples units this can cause issues with no or little hot water and cold slugs. I have not experienced that with the truma comfort.

The comfort box fits into the same space as many other units. The exterior will have to be painted as I believe it is white or unpainted plastic.
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