Rheem 18kW 240V Tankless Electric Water Heater, Gray

I replaced a 55 gallon hot water tank with this unit, I bought a little larger unit than what the ratings said I needed to be safe. Make sure you check your electrical panel to make sure you have room for 3 x 40 double pole 40 amp circuit breakers. I didn’t have enough room, had to add a sub panel plus had to run 9 x 8 gauge wires the unit requires. I’m pretty handy, but asked a certified electrician to help me with the pre wiring. To be honest, I would have been afraid to try and do this myself even with all my experience. Installation was pretty simple after you have the wiring installed. Use 1 inch piping from your electrical panel to the tankless electrical unit or you won’t be able to pull the nine 8 gauge wires through the pipe. I also suggest having an electrical panel with a main breaker so you don’t have to shut the whole house down for the final install. Additionally i installed a surge protector to hopefully protect the unit from power surges which appears to have delicate electronics inside. We’ve only had this unit in operation for 4 days so far, but the water is really hot, have had no issues at this point and I love the added space gained without having the tank. Time will tell if we save 50% on energy, but from all my research it makes sense even with us living in a warm climate. There are several tankless unit manufacturers with great ratings, I went with Rheem because if I have an issue, they are based in the USA and hopefully that means English speaking in my time zone….. Hope my review is helpful to you.

Easy to install and keeps our water hot!! After a bad experience with our last one (different brand) we are so impressed with this one and hope it last us a long time! We have a 3bd 2ba and it keeps up with our water!

I’ve installed three of these, and all have worked flawlessly. One of them provides adequate hot water for a small home (2 adults) having a shower, lavatory, kitchen sink, dishwasher, and clothes washer. Although it can draw up to 46 amps, the 100 amp main breaker has never tripped in spite of having an electric stove, air conditioner, clothes dryer, and refrigerator/freezer. The customers are delighted even after three years of constant use. A central location is important, as is minimizing piping bends. Be sure not to overtighten the compression fittings at the entrance and exit of the device. A clog in the shower head caused the heater not to work (as designed) due to low flow. My guess is that anyone having problems usually has an upstream or downstream issue not related to the proper performance of the heater.

New Review: Ok, this lasted 26 months before I finally ripped it off the wall and replaced it. It had failed three times in that 26 months, and this was the last straw for me. After almost exactly one year, one of the heating elements fell apart. It was literally in pieces. I replaced the bad element with a third-party element, and almost exactly one year later, the second factory heating element fell apart, too. My water has very low mineral content, but after the first one failed, I cleaned the elements every six months along with flushing the whole system. That still didn’t keep the factory elements from failing. The third-party elements looked fine. I bought some spares just in case. Finally, last weekend I started noticing that the water coming out of the tap was CRAZY hot. When I started looking for the problem, I found that one of the heating elements was stuck on all of the time. The water would just keep heating up inside until the thermal protection circuit turned it off. Something in the electronics had failed. There was another issue with the water heater unrelated to these failures, too. I have solar panels on my roof, and I found that whenever someone would turn on the hot water, the solar inverter would turn off. The water heater was injecting too much electrical noise onto my power lines, which the inverter didn’t like. There is absolutely zero electrical noise filtering on the water heater, so I added my own. This fixed the solar problem, but the filter that I added consumed some power all of the time, so it wasn’t saving me energy like I’d wanted. I replaced it earlier this week with a 24kW model from a different manufacturer thar I found locally. The new one, even though it has a higher power rating, uses nearly half of the energy required by the Rheem to take a shower, 7kW vs 12kW. Since it has a higher power rating, it’s easier to use hot water at multiple points simultaneously. It also has a dynamically adjusting flow meter, compared to the Rheem where I needed to add an external flow restrictor. Don’t buy this heater. Spend a few dollars more and get something that is built better, doesn’t constantly break down, and doesn’t cost as much to operate. Get a Stiebel Eltron Tempra 24 Plus, which costs a bit more up front, but works much, much better. Original Review: A week shy of one year ago, I purchased this to replace the old water heater in my home that had quit working. The installation was easy, it only took me an hour or so to swap out, and it worked great. For a year. My warranty will expire in three days, and the water heater stopped working a few days ago. It wasn’t completely dead, and it would heat the water to around 85 degrees, but that still makes a miserable shower. I called the warranty department, and they sent me a troubleshooting guide. Using this guide, I determined that one of the heating elements was open. Honestly, I didn’t feel like it was worth the effort of trying to get this fixed under warranty, so I ordered a replacement (two, so I could replace them both) 9kW heating element here on Amazon and they were delivered the next day. The maintenance instructions say that you should pull the elements out every 6-12 months and soak them in vinegar to remove any scale, but admittedly, I hadn’t done that. My water is very soft with a low mineral count, so I tend to neglect things like this. When I removed the bad element, there were no mineral or calcium deposits on it, but the element was in horrible shape. It was all burned up, with gaping holes, twisted metal, and exposed, broken metal coils. The other element looked perfect. The bad one looked like it had been in a furnace. I replaced the elements with new ones, and it’s operational again. I’m happy with this heater while it is working, but I don’t know if I’m crazy about possibly needing to replace the elements once a year. Hopefully, I just had bad luck with the one element.

Working very well.

Installation was easy. It's only been up and running for about 2 weeks, but so far it's working great.

To get a hot full bath is more than enough. Very happy with this heater.

Muy mal producto. No cumplió con lo esperado. Jamás calentó lo suficiente.

Great unit, services kitchen, bathroom and laundry room no problem.