So why did you say it seems like a 'waste' for it to fire up when you are drawing hot water, since that is what is was made to do?
The big heater is like $1000ish and (this is just my impression) the heat cycle (cold/hot/cold) seems traumatic.
I don't think these things are that sensitive. If anything is a waste, I'd said it's putting a second heater 3 meters further up the line. That seems excessive.
Also, I wanted to address something you said further up:
I got a Rinnai from some local supply house, I think the largest they make. It can keep up with my dual head shower (with low flow stuff removed), the clothes washer, and dish washing.
As I recall, the Rinnai was about $1K and I put it in myself. Actually, I had installed a Sakura from Taiwan I self imported before the Rinnai. That thing was awesome, $200 and it could deliver boiling water at the tap. I had to replace it after a couple of years tho...
According to the BBS, you live in Fullerton, CA. A quick check says that the coldest average temp it ever gets to there is a chilly January night of 48 degrees.
As I understand it (and I'm sure K447 will correct me if I'm wrong - please do) there's a trick with tankless heaters: a standard tank heater will heat up the temperature of the city water to a specific temp and hold it there, delivering a fairly constant flow and temperature of hot water until it runs out. A tankless can only raise the temp of the water coming in so much, and therefore its flow rate (GPM) is subject to the temperature of the incoming water.
If the city water is cold, most tankless heaters will bring it up to a usable temperature, but the GPM will decrease. I don't live in anywhere near the coldest part of the country, but we did get into the negatives this past winter, and there's no way that one tankless could have kept up with our shower (you did see that I have SIX showerheads, right?
).
That means we would need two tanks and the additional device that gauges when additional help from the second heater is needed. Maybe that wouldn't be $6K, but it was close when I checked it out. I could have gone for just one tankless heater, but the pressure on the showerheads would have dropped significantly to attempt to deliver the water.
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