# Adding A Second Hot Water Heater



## kelly

Has anyone added a second or bigger hot water heater to there RV I have found an 18 gallon 110vac that will fit in the front storage. IM thinkng about taking the A/C power off of the stock heater and using it as a gas only and adding the 18 gallon electric . Add a couple of vavles where i can select one or the other . Or just put them in series and use both gas and electric at the same time. that would give me a total of 24 gallons of hot water. Still thinking about it just trying to look at all the options.


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## Dub

Maybe try an electric/gas instant hot water heater...I think some newer high end 5er's come with them.


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## hautevue

Instant hot water systems are superb but not cheap. There is no storage tank, and the units are not particularly big. You get unlimited hot water--it makes it "on the fly" as the cold water flows through it. Disadvantage is cost, plus, for a TT, you have your limit as to the fresh water tank size and the gray tank for the shower water.

Kids (read teenagers) can take looooong showers with one, but will run you out of fresh water or fill your gray tank!

They are very popular in Europe. You need to find out how well they work on propane, which has less heat per unit of gas than natural gas.

But instant hot water is very nice!!!


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## Traveling Tek

hautevue said:


> Instant hot water systems are superb but not cheap. There is no storage tank, and the units are not particularly big. You get unlimited hot water--it makes it "on the fly" as the cold water flows through it. Disadvantage is cost, plus, for a TT, you have your limit as to the fresh water tank size and the gray tank for the shower water.
> 
> Kids (read teenagers) can take looooong showers with one, but will run you out of fresh water or fill your gray tank!
> 
> They are very popular in Europe. You need to find out how well they work on propane, which has less heat per unit of gas than natural gas.
> 
> But instant hot water is very nice!!!


Installed one of these from Ebay in my old '73 Dodge RV. Worked good. Ran on propane and used 2 D batteries to ignite it automatically. It did need to be vented which was easy. I mounted it in a closet and then vented it out through the fridge roof vent. Didn't make boiling water, but you could adjust the temp and it made a perfect shower temp without needing cold water side turned on.

Think it was only like $240 on Ebay. Wasn't bad at all compared to other RV hot water systems.


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## Y-Guy

Remember you'll be carrying an additional 150# of weight in that tank when it's full. It may impact your tongue weight if you put it in the front storage and carry it full.


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## Scoutr2

Y-Guy said:


> Remember you'll be carrying an additional 150# of weight in that tank when it's full. It may impact your tongue weight if you put it in the front storage and carry it full.


And you'll be taking up valuable storage space. We almost bought a 25RS, until I realized there was virtually NO outside storage space. So we settled on our 29BHS, which has the pass-thru storage up front.

If you turn your HW heater on both gas and electric at the same time, it will produce hot water faster. As stated earlier, the gray/black tanks will fill up fast if you have the mindset that you have a fairly unlimited supply of hot water. If you are hooked up to a sewer, that's no problem. But if you don't have a sewer hookup, you'll be in trouble within a day!

We've had our Outback for over four seasons and have never run out of hot water. We usually use the showers at the campground - we're paying for them anyway. But when we DO take a shower in the trailer, we wet ourselves down, turn the water off (at the shower spray head), lather up, then rinse off. I probably don't use 6 gallons of water TOTAL to take a shower. (And thinking back a number of years makes me laugh - we used to be tent campers and the only way to heat water then was over the fire or on our Coleman stove! But it was fun!)

If it were me - I'd teach the kiddies and DW how to take GI showers and save my money (and sweat) for other mods and upgrades.

But that's just me.

Mike


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## Dub

hautevue said:


> Instant hot water systems are superb but not cheap. There is no storage tank, and the units are not particularly big. You get unlimited hot water--it makes it "on the fly" as the cold water flows through it. Disadvantage is cost, plus, for a TT, you have your limit as to the fresh water tank size and the gray tank for the shower water.
> 
> Kids (read teenagers) can take looooong showers with one, but will run you out of fresh water or fill your gray tank!
> 
> They are very popular in Europe. You need to find out how well they work on propane, which has less heat per unit of gas than natural gas.
> 
> But instant hot water is very nice!!!


This isn't a problem for me since I keep my unit at our seasonal site 48weeks a year where I have a fresh water supply as well as a grey drain. With the Outback my wife cannot take a complete shower with both the gas and electric heaters turned on...in our old camper she could. I don't know if they changed the build quality but it was the same tank in our old as our new, but the one in the Outback just isn't as efficient. I've been considering an upgrade to a 10 gallon heater or one of those instant heaters. I like the idea of instant since it would reduce the weight of the camper when being towed due to there being six less gallons of water on board...water that is somewhat useless if your fresh tank runs dry as you need another source to push the six gallons through, otherwise they just sit.


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## Blackjack

If you don't already have the Oxygenics shower head to replace the OEM then I'd suggect that. It's a cheap and easy fix to get "more" hot water and water pressure. I haven't run out of hot water since we added this because it uses less water.


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## hautevue

X2 w/Blackjack--the Oxygenics is super. VERY easy to install--it took 5 minutes, less time than walking out to the TT and back. Well designed, and not expensive. Definitely strrrrretches the water supply!


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## GlenninTexas

You might also consider an auxillary hw heater. They are portable and sit outside your RV. I've seen them on the internet. Don't know how they're plumbed into the rv though.

Regards, Glenn


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## 4ME

Is this the showerhead your talking about?

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=oxygenics+hand-held+shower+head&rlz=1R2GPEA_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=10901439579854597952&ei=a1NDTdb7DZSosAOf4ZztCg&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEMQ8wIwAw#


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## Blackjack

Yes, that's it and here's a link to one of the discussions...

My link


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## clarkely

oxygenics shower is awesome


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