Review by F. PATCH:

My wife reminded me that our children and grandchildren were due to visit our cottage in one week, but not hot water. I placed my order on line and it was delivered in 3 days. Hot water at the cottage in 4 days. Wow it only took me 15 minutes to install. Then hot showers for all on the weekend. Great product.Bosch PowerStar 1.5 GPM Point-Of-Use Indoor Tankless Electric Water Heater #AE9.5

Review by Flashlight fan:

This heater works as advertised! The adjustments for temperature and the 220v hookup should be done by someone comfortable with these tasks – the instructions are not as clear as they could be. The indicator light is very helpful it adjusting the flow as it indicates when the unit is on (there is a click also).

Review by A. Anderson:

Bosch ES series is a huge step forward in technical development but such a bad taste has been left by former products and Bosch technical support that few plumbers will recommend one regardless of what improvements are made today or tomorrow. This model still has the same potential for gas valve failure that goes back to their 250 SX series that if condensation or rain is not caught before it reaches the gas valve, the valve must be replaced and is nearly 3X the cost of their competitors. Performance is as stated but if your incoming water temperature is not 65 F then expect far less performance. Your homes gas piping and water piping must be taken into account before considering this and the cost of a single wall stainless steel vent system must be calculated into the total cost. Bosch also requires a propritory roof termination kit that if not installed, voids your warranty and this too adds to the total cost.

As a licensed plumber contractor in Ca and a former authorized service provider I had never in all the years of servicing Bosch, seen a correctly installed Bosch tankless. It really doesn’t take that much effort to read the instructions and follow them. Of all the various makes and models we have installed in nearly 30 years, I never once had a failure or problem due to my own installations. Bosch service calls sometimes totaled more than 35 per week on new installations alone by home owners, handymen and plumbers. If properly installed, they are perfectly good water heaters. Tthey do have the best and most robust heat exchangers of all brands, this particular models control board is the most advanced and user friendly of all but only to service providers.

The only downside is the limited access to Bosch technical support too and if not installed to the letter, Bosch may and have voided warranties in the past.

Due diligence goes a long ways and emotional reviews only blur accurate information for those seeking answers. Bosch is making the effort to improve product and service and I will give them that…

Review by Megan K. Pollitt:

Have to amend my first, glowing review. This thing is crap, and Bosch customer service is completely unhelpful. The heater won’t stay on–keeps flickering on and off–and Bosch basically says they can’t/won’t help. We can’t take showers unless we constantly reset the thing. I have spent 1200 for a complete piece of garbage, and I wish I had a 50-gallon heater.

One more thing: if you think you are going to save natural gas with this thing, think again. We have saved ZERO on our gas bill–it is so gas-intensive when it on that is more than consumes what our old one used.

I STRONGLY recommend

Review by hot water lover:

While doing a major remodeling which involved relocating our water heater, we decided to go tankless. Since we were upgrading our shower and installing a garden whirlpool tub, we knew hot water demand would soar. Also, we knew both showers would be running at the same time and the old water heater just would not be able to keep up. Our plumber/HVAC contractor is a specialist in energy efficiency, having previously been an executive with a large national energy efficiency company prior to the bust. His recommendation: the Rinnai NG Tankless Water Heater.

It takes longer to get one installed properly, with the extra venting and the materials required. Don’t be part of the learning curve for your installer. Make SURE your installer has experience with tankless installations and ASK FOR REFERENCES. It is a different technology and the installation techniques are different from a traditional water heater.

It is a space saving unit, and extremely quiet. And it can flat crank out the hot water! No lags, no lukewarm spaces, no waiting, just all the hot water you want when you want it! Our gas bill dropped about 15% in a much colder winter – no more water heater constantly running to keep hot water hot, no more shortened showers, and a very happy family.

Review by Joe Crogan:

I LOVE this product!

I know, I’m selling it on my web site and I may have a conflict of interest.

Having said that, I stand behind this water heater 110%

I would suggest you take the time and compare this unit with it’s competitors. Look for qualified and trained Rinnai installers. Get feedback from others. It will be time well spent.

(1) Unlimited hot water

(2) Energy savings

(3) 0 to ,500 tax credit

(4) Space savings

(5) 12 year warranty with a 20 year life expectancy

Review by D. Matheny:

We’ve had the Rinnai R94LSi for about 1.5 years at this point and have been extremely happy with it. Now that we have had it for a while, I figured I should sit down and write a quick review about it.

Before getting this tankless water heater, we actually had 2 40-gallon hot water heaters in our house. Unfortunately, because of the way the plumbing was run, we had a major issue with running out of hot water if the kids took a shower or bath while we were cleaning up the kitchen at night. When we had the money to do this project, we actually did it to fix the issue with running out of hot water and figured that any energy savings would be a bonus.

Here are some of the main things we’ve really enjoyed about this unit:

1) Since I replaced 2 water heaters with one tankless heater, I was able to get some extra storage space in the garage and then built a workbench where the storage had previously been. Taken alone, the space savings almost made this tankless worth it for me!

2) We never run out of hot water anymore. Our house has 3.5 bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry – and I can run all the faucets on full blast at any time of year without overloading this unit. (As a side note, we do live in Austin, TX so I suspect that areas with a colder water supply may need a larger unit for the same sized house.)

3) The energy savings have been noticeable. This is one area I wasn’t completely convinced of when I bought the tankless unit – but the savings on our monthly bill have been noticeable. What I’ve done is to compare my gas and water usage with the same month from the previous year and have found that the gas usage has been cut basically in half. The water usage has not changed. It will still take a while before this pays for itself, but I wasn’t really expecting that it ever would.

4) We no longer have a water tank in the attic. One of our previous water heaters was sitting in the 2nd story attic and I’ve known several people who have had their tanks rupture and cause thousands of dollars of damage. With the tankless unit, I no longer have to worry about that issue. Not that other things can’t leak, but they don’t have 40 gallon tanks! .

5) Compared to other brands of tankless heaters, the minimum flow rate is much better – I talk about this in more depth in the next section.

The technology with tankless heaters is quite a bit different from traditional hot water heaters, so here are some other things to consider:

1) I didn’t fully understand this before buying the Rinnai, but the minimum flow rate is critically important with tankless water heaters. This number represents the minimum amount of hot water that needs to be flowing before the heater will kick on. Basically, this is just something to keep in mind and it’s one of those things that is just different compared to a traditional water heater. I thank my lucky stars that I went with the Rinnai instead of the cheaper models that I also looked at because it turns out that the minimum flow rate isn’t as low on those units since most people are just comparing the maximum flow rate numbers! This has impacted me twice when I was taking a cold shower immediately after working out – on those occasions the hot water line was completely drained before I was done showering and I ended up with a REALLY COLD shower until I could get the hot water line filled again.

2) When deciding which tankless unit to buy, be sure to take your local cold water temperature into account. These units will be able to raise the temperature of a certain amount of water by a specific amount – so if your cold water is too cold for the unit you buy, I suspect you will be disapointed. I probably wouldn’t even mention this, except that I’ve read a lot of bad reviews where this seemed to be at the root of the problem. Also, I talked to 3 different plumbers before buying this R94LSi and one of them recommended the R75LSi instead – I’m glad I went with the larger unit since it really wasn’t much more money anyway.

As a final note: when we did start looking seriously into this purchase, I had several plumbers come by to bid the job for me; but it quickly became obvious that I could do it for a lot less money. [...]

If you do decide to go the do-it-yourself route, remember that the tankless unit needs a 3/4″ gas feed instead of the 1/2″ that your current water heater uses. You can’t just use an adapter for this – you need to be able to get back to a larger gas section and resize the feed from there (google is a great tool for understanding what you need to do here). As far as the plumbing connections go, the SharkBite connectors were a real life-saver and I’m much more confident in the durability of the connections.

Anyway, I know this review has run kind of long, but I want to repeat that I highly recommend these tankless heaters. We love ours and I would never want to trade back now that I know what I was missing:).

Review by A. Anderson:

We have installed over 1,500 tankless water heaters in the last 10 years and by far Rinnai has been the most reliable of all the major brands. More importantly, after market support is what separate’s Rinnai from the pack. No I don’t work for Rinnai but I do service and install them and have one in my own home. If installed and maintained properly, they will give years of trouble free service. Mine has long since paid for it’s self in gas savings over our old 40 gallon tank water heater. I highly recommend this product!

Review by M. Goheen:

This unit HAS to have a low flow in order for the heating capacity not to be exceeded by the requirements of the water flow. Water requires alot of energy input to change it’s temp, and the colder it comes out of the ground, the lower the maximum output temp will be at a given flow rate… thus they limit the maximum flow rate so that it will work in places where the water does not come out of the ground at 60+ degrees as it likely does in most of Brazil.

Brazilians may be used to 0.88 gallon per minute showers, but people in the US may be dissappointed, based on what they’re used to.

They should mention this more prominently in the Product Description, which, overall is hard to decipher due to all caps in sections, and a total lack of paragraph separation…

The other thing that should be prominently and correctly identified is that this device, though it is 110 volts, would not be safe to plug into a common 110/120 volt household or commercial grade receptacle. For a safe installation, it requires minimum 10 gauge wiring, and a 30 amp breaker, as 25 amps is not a common breaker size here.

Additionally, wire is not commonly sold with an amperage rating… Wire size is dictated by code according to the breaker amperage, which must match or exceed the amperage requirement of the device… which in this case is 25 amps, so 30 is the next step up in common breaker sizes.

Review by M. Esaili:

This product is perfect for homes where the space is an issue or for locations distant from heating source.

The first heater we received and installed was mulfunctioning. After discussing the troubleshooting with BOSH, Amazon the same day we contacted them sent us new replacement. Returning the first heater could be easier. Thank you Amazon.com!

My electric panel was just some year new, we did not have to provide any additional works besides wiring the heater. I saved all closet space(where I had located 30gal. el water heater) for other use. Heater is very small, it would easily fit under the sink. Temperature of hot water can be adjusted to your needs. 2 gallons of hot water per minute are good enough. According to professional installer, the heater is so simple device, that it should not have any additional problems.

I am very happy with the product and am starting considering this type of hot water heater for whole house, no matter price for electrical works.

Where the space is an issue, this product is one of great solutions.

I am highly recomanding this heater.