• By Myles Kleeman
• Tags: Rinnai, Tankless, Water Heater
• February 15, 2016

Rinnai Makes a Tankless Water Heater for Every Home

We’ve gone over our favorite A.O. Smith gas-fired storage water heaters and the best indirect water heaters from NTI in the past, but tankless is one area of the water heating game that the Able Distributors blog hasn’t touched on until now.

Tankless water heaters offer plenty of advantages over traditional or indirect models, as well as some tradeoffs. The strength of tankless water heating lies in the ability to fulfill consecutive jobs, while storage water heaters are typically better suited to serve simultaneous demands. While tankless might not be the right choice for every application, the versatility and efficiency makes it an excellent choice in plenty of situations, especially residential ones. Rinnai makes it easy to find the perfect tankless water heater for clients’ homes by offering a variety of models across a wide range of capacities and efficiency ratings.

The Luxury Series

Rinnai’s Luxury Series tankless water heaters are non-condensing models. The models that we are focusing on are the RL94i and RL75i. Both of these are indoor models that utilize concentric venting with an energy factor of 0.82. The RL94i has a nominal capacity of 199,000 BTU and is capable of delivering 4.7 gallons of hot water per minute at a water temperature rise of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The RL75i offers similar performance with ratings of 180,000 BTU and 4.3 GPM.

Rinnai’s Luxury Series provides several added benefits beyond unlimited hot water. For one, the units are incredibly compact and mount easily on the wall, making them far less obtrusive than storage heaters. Additionally, Rinnai constructs the heat exchangers for their Luxury Series with durable copper and backs them with a 12-year residential warranty. Finally, every Luxury Series gas-fired tankless water heater includes Cir-Logic technology, which allows you to easily incorporate a recirculation pump into the system.

The Ultra Series

The Rinnai Ultra Series is a step up from the Luxury Series in every way. We’ll be concentrating on the RU80i, RU98i, RUC80i, and RUC98i. All of these are indoor water heaters; RUC models are equipped for either concentric venting or a two-pipe PVC/CPVC venting, while RU models require an adapter for use in non-concentric venting systems.

The RU80i and RUC80i have a nominal capacity of 152,000 BTU with a flow rate of 4.2 GPM at a 70 degree Fahrenheit temperature rise, whereas the RU98i and RUC98i and 199,000 BTU and 5.5 GPM. The 152,000 BTU models have an energy factor of 0.96 and the larger ones are close behind at 0.95. Like the Luxury Series, these units include a copper heat exchanger and Circ-Logic technology.

By only heating the water that your customers need, tankless water heaters already offer an efficiency upgrade, but with Energy Factor ratings ranging from 0.82 to 0.96, Rinnai makes it even easier for homeowners to save on their water bills.

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