Gas Freeloader hot water died, looking for replacement options

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tim360

34 posts

Geek

#240603 16-Sep-2018 14:55

Hi, our ancient gas freeloader hot water cylinder just dropped it's guts yesterday. The novelty of cold showers has worn off already so I'm rapidly trying to figure out our options.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has gone through the same experience.

Here are some facts:

we only use gas now for hot water
costs about $80/month for gas, almost half of which is the supply charge
heating is via central A/C
family of 4 (3 females and 1 male... think long showers)
needs to be an outdoor unit
current unit is located outside of lounge and near bedroom
we're in the middle of a reno, so by chance I'd just asked the sparky to run a cable to the hot water cylinder in case we converted to AC in the future

As I see it my options are:

Replace like for like with a new Rheem Stellar
Replace with a conventional electric cylinder
Replace with a AC unit, eg EcoSpring.

All options seem to have their pros and cons. Would like to hear what others have done when faced with a similar situation.

SomeoneSomewhere

1804 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2091501 16-Sep-2018 16:19

One more option would be a continuous flow gas heater. Still means keeping the gas connected, but no more cold showers. Smaller footprint too, if that matters.

tim360

34 posts

Geek

#2091510 16-Sep-2018 16:56

Yes that's another option, although the delay in the hot water coming out the tap has always bugged me when I've had these in the past. Have also found they don't always trigger when running hot water at a low flow rate. Maybe the modern units are much better?

SomeoneSomewhere

1804 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#2091512 16-Sep-2018 16:58

Modern units are definitely much better.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#2091551 16-Sep-2018 17:32

I would never not having continuous gas water now. The delay is no more than normal cylinders.

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#2091725 17-Sep-2018 01:25

Definitely stay with gas, since you use a lot of hot water. The freeloader would have an approx 7KW recovery rate. So if you went electric, you would have to get a much larger hot water cylinder. To compensate for the slower recovery rate of normal electric cylinders.

Getting an infinity will require a larger gas pipe to be installed from the meter to the infinity. It is very unlikely that the existing gas pipe that feeds the freeloader would be big enough. The cost to get an infinity will depend a lot on how much that pipe upgrade will cost.

Also, since there is always a small startup delay with an infinity. If you turn the hot taps on and off a lot, the startup delay causes cold bursts to come from the hot water taps. Some people don't care about that, while other people hate that.

tim360

34 posts

Geek

#2092881 18-Sep-2018 21:34

Thanks all for your feedback. Had one plumber/gas fitter around today.

Replacing with a new Stellar seems to be the most straight forward option. However the various comments on productreview.com.au about pilot light issues and general reliability is concerning.

Yes we'd need to upgrade the gas pipe for the continuous gas system. The plumber looked under our house and didn't seem that keen on the lack of space to work with, I'm guessing that means it'll cost me more.