Anyone use an Eccotemp tankless water heater?

I'm trying to speed up my sparge heating times to decrease my impatience. I've got a brew magic which is really easy to use BUT it takes FOREVER to heat up the sparge water. I've got an RO tank and can have it ready to pull water from with a diaphragm pump @ about 3 gallons per minute so in 5 minutes I should have 150 degree water and another 15 degrees should be easy to reach in little time I think.

Anyone had any use with these? Rvs, camping? Just curious if they hold up. I'm thinking of getting the RV one that does 2 gpm but I'm also contemplating the 3gpm its only a little more but then I can't take it with me conveniently this summer/ fall camping.

Most people use tankless heaters that can be raised to above 150 (commercial, usually have a 'remote' for some reason). They are expensive. Your diaphragm pump is probably not rated above 150 though. If you can do sparge temps with a tankless heater, then it's just about calculating your sparge speed, in which case I'd think 1 GPM is better than 3, and you can do away with filling the HLT altogether, unless you need to acidify I guess.

No experience with that brand.

I have a feeling with this one it will get up to that kind of temp if I slow down the flow via a valve. However my hopes are that it will not need to be slowed down to meet the temps and will be matched well with the pump to its performance.

Its off ebay, 74k btu @ 3.4 gallons per minute @ 40psi to turn it on. Pump runs at 45psi, water heater ignites @ 40psi. Should match well.

Pump is actually necessary and sold by them to run the outdoor shower version that they sell for 129.00 called the eccotemp 5 I think. Its pretty neat. Nice camping rig for portable hot water.

When it shows up I'm going to test it, wish me luck that i can crank 170 degree water out of it, that would be rad!!! I've figured at this point I add in about 12 gallons and it comes out where I need, @ 3 gpm I should be all set in under 5 minutes, and can move right along to the mash...

Most hot water heaters intentionally won't go that high (due to their thermostat) because that would actually scald people and they would cease to exist as a company shortly thereafter. That's why scalding temp heaters are 'commercial'.

But, not to poo poo on your parade. Good luck!! and report back.

I have the ecco temp 8 i believe in my kitchen, not as good as the usa heater 60 amp heater i had before you will have to cut the flow to get good heating, and like the post before will only go so far then cut out.

Why not incorporate the tankless heater into the RO tank. Do a recirculation onto itself. You'll have sparge temp water waiting to go. You could even go with the small one then.

It will be WAY TOO SLOW, RO water even with my GE merlin 720GPD is still about 30 gallons an hour, which is still not going to get me off the races quickly as i want. I'm trying to be efficient and get the whole thing done in under 3 hours. From start to finish hanging things to dry. I think it can be done.

I will just have to have prefilled containers with water. The way I'm going to do that is by just setting up an RO filter to pump into a tank with a float valve, and have it already on the night before or earlier in the day. It doesn't take long, but it does take time. If i were to do a few batches in a day which i will be doing probably the next time, I'm going to try and do 3 in one day since I don't get a lot of free days to do it. This will be helpful.

The RO inline heater also may not keep it hot, it may lose temp faster than it will fill the container. I was having a pretty substantial problem with slow temp rising. I'm a little curious if maybe the burner could have been bigger on the sparge, but oh well... too late for that I guess. I'm sure they have their reasons. I think with the burner on it will rise the temp, but again not fast enough. I spent like almost an hour heating it, it was ridiculous. Then an hour on the mash, then 90 minutes on the boil... OMG, haha... My first batch ever made, sucessfully finished and was cleaned up in 7 hours. It took a little time to setup the materials, etc. Closer to 9 hours including lunch and the brew supply store trip. I forgot to mill 2 of the 4 grains, they were only 1# bags though, so the 19# 2 row was good so it should at least be decent beer.

I'm trying to make this thing be headache free, the hot water is #1 on my list of things to deal with to shorten the first but more importantly, second and third batches.

SankePankey said:

Most hot water heaters intentionally won't go that high (due to their thermostat) because that would actually scald people and they would cease to exist as a company shortly thereafter. That's why scalding temp heaters are 'commercial'.

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I don't know about "most"... Noritz will go to 180 and that's one of the most popular proven brands around.

You may want to search for "Flash Boiler." There is a nice one here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/flash-boiler-153116/

It might be cheaper than a very expensive tankless water heater system.

Randar said:

I don't know about "most"... Noritz will go to 180 and that's one of the most popular proven brands around.

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Yes and those models would be the 'commercial' models- starting with the prefix NC (not NR).

A tankless hot water heater that is not (necessarily) commercial and produces scalding temp hot water is called a hydronic boiler.

I'm not all that much more knowledgeable than that on the subject so if you have any info past this, please provide.

The tankless water heaters would work for high flow rate strike water heating, but when it comes to low flow for sparge they would not fire up. As probably the original builder and longest user of the flash boiler system, it is nice to be able to dough in from a cold start in about 6 minutes, heat wort up to 60 degrees at 1 gpm flow, and do 175 degree sparge water without waiting for tanks to warm up. The original flash boiler powered system is 8 years old, and the automated system was built and tested in 2008.
Sanch is the latest person to build a flash boiler heated brewing system, and with manual control it was fairly easy to build and operate.

I like it, im going to. Have to read more about it to see what exactly you did there. I bought the eccotemp 12 for what its worth, not the eccotemp 5 I was referencing about the pump. Due to flow rate of 3x more I would have to guess it will be a hotter burn than the eccotemp 5. It should get me up to 150ish and be ready to allow the burners to carry me as its filling to 165.

Id really be interested in this thing for the boil kettle. Getting temps up another 60 degrees asap would be amamazing. I don't have a camera at the moment but when I get one ill make some visual documentation of this project as I approach each issue.

I like the flash boiler . Im curious if I could modify the thermostat on the eccotemp? Good ideas. Im going to work on this a lot duing the summer.