BOSCH Electric Mini-Tank Water Heater Tronic 3000 T 4-Gallon (ES4) - Eliminate Time for Hot Water - Shelf, Wall or Floor Mounted

We bought a ranch house recently with a crawl space and 60+ feet of distance from the tankless hot water heater at one end of the house to the master bathroom. It takes 1 and a half minutes for hot water to start flowing from the bathroom sink tap after the tap is turned on. Same for the guest bathroom across the hall). Not fun for the wife when she wants hot water and wants it immediately to use for washing her face and hands. And a waste of water and energy as well. I did the research and this water heater seemed to fit the bill for our needs and situation. I picked up a water tap splitter and 2 hoses from HD and was delighted to have installation go smoothly and problem free - mostly. It took a bit of investigation to decide on drilling a hole at the bottom side of the sink cabinet and running a short extension cord from the receptacle on the wall beside the sink to the heater. The other option was to run an electrical cable into the sink cabinet and install a receptacle there for the heater plug. Which would have required drilling a hole through the cabinet base and the ceramic tile floor. My wife was OK with using the side receptacle. The receptacle is near the side edge of the cabinet and the extension cord runs along the edge of the back of the cabinet and wall to the bottom so visually it does not look out of place. Oh, and the extension cord plug is the flat kind so that helps it to blend in (not stick out like a normal electrical plug). Left the water heater setting at the Normal setting on the dial and hot water (111 degrees F.) starts flowing as soon as the water that is the line between the water heater and the tap clears (2-3 seconds). We find the normal setting is hot enough for us to use as is. Leaving the hot water tap FULL OPEN results in hot water flowing for 2 minutes, with it slowly getting less hot over that period of time towards the last 30 seconds to a minute. Which works for our needs. You could increase the hot water temperature and mix cold water to lengthen the time I suppose, but for washing our face and/or hands, the two minutes is sufficient. The other option is to open the tap less than half way and that would allow for more time as well. Overall, very pleased with this heater and plan to order another one for the guest bathroom. Off course Murphy's Law did visit me during installation. The disconnected hot water shut off valve started every so slowly to leak - a few drops over the course of several hours. The seal had deteriorated. (41 year old house). Fixing that was much more trouble than installing the hot water tank. But after several trips and tries of different valves I finally managed to take care of that problem.

This is my 3rd time purchasing these tanks... I bought one 2 years ago so I could use it with my off grid solar.. 2 years it's been and it's still going strong, so I decided to buy 2 more.. 1 to replace my 40 gallon electric hot water heater and another for a spare ( prepping)...I don't know what some people are complaining about on the few bad reviews, I mean don't you people have any brains or common sense?.. it's a 7 gallon hot water heater, you can't expect a 20 minute hot shower but I can get a 10 to 12 minute shower and I like pretty warm showers... Plus on top of that it uses less than 1\3 of the electric my 40 gallon heater did, plus I can run it on solar or a small generator, it takes about 35 minutes to fully recover, and seems well built and judging from the other one I put in 2 years ago seems quite reliable..My only complaint is I bought them returned.. one was brand new and never installed so I put that one in my preps.. the other however was installed by a sloppy plumber who marked it up with pipe dope and gouged it quite a bit.. I installed that one, it works great but should've been less than 204.00 in my opinion which was marked as like new.. but anyways no fault of the hot water heater, just incompetent people, but I saved 160 dollars buying 2 of them though so I can live with it having a few marks back in a closet where no one can see it anyways...I highly recommend these water heaters from having one for over 2 years now and it has been 100% problem free and I have 2 of them operating in my home, one does my downstairs bathroom and kitchen and the other does my upstairs bathroom and laundry room.. the money you'll save on electric over the life of the tank will pay for itself...Oh and by the way these small tanks heat the water up way way hotter than a regular hot water tank, so you use way less hot water taking a shower, that's way I can get a 10 to 12 minute shower, you could never hold your hand under straight hot water coming from these.. a regular hot water tank heats the water to 120 degrees where as these small tanks heat water to 140 to 160..And they are really well insulated too will keep water hot for hours before needing to cycle on..

We needed hot water at the kitchen sink... our main HW supply took too long to deliver to this sink at the end of the piping run. So I first tried one of those tankless water heaters but could only provide 120vAC power (the same as the disposal) and that unit could not heat up the 60-degree cold water to any useable temperature. It is my understanding the 220vAC units do a better job.I decided to try a 'storage' type unit. The Bosch 3-gallon is much larger (13"x13" base) than a tankless and took some rearranging under the sink to make it fit. But, boy oh boy does it work great! The temperature is adjustable (mine is around 125 degrees) and voila! HW in seconds.Highly recommend for those whose have the space.

I've been using this in a small cargo trailer camper for the last 4 years and it has performed very well. However, a few things to note. The anode rod only last between 12-18 months and if you fail to replace it timely the tank will likely soon fail. This seems to be the case even with good, non-aggressive water quality. The unit does not have any captive air space and this requires an open system or expansion tank. I should have known this by looking at it, but learned the hard way when a water line blew apart. Also, I wish the WH had a drain to allow for easier anode change out or for winterizing. Finally replacement parts are expensive. Aftermarket anode rods work well and are inexpensive, but dont come with gaskets. A new electric element, anode rod and gasket is about 1/2 the price of a new heater. With that all said, I located my WH with ease of access in mind and am happy with the product overall.