GIRARD Tankless RV Water Heater, 12V Power, 42,000 BTUs, Quiet Operation, Onboard Microprocessor, Digital User Control Panel, Freeze Protection, Easy Installation - 2022107534

One year update.... The unit is still running like a champ! I'm getting a 73°F rise across the unit in the winter time with 40 something inler water temp. I can find no fault with this unit. Three month update... Still running strong AND using less propane than I would have otherwise with the 12 gallon suburban. As we all know, running dsi heaters with both propane and a.c. element create faster recovery. A non issue with the Girard unit. I am seeing a 65°F rise across the unit, but I have mine set at 115°F anyway. Still, by far, the best $500 I ever spent for our coach. I just wish I had put these in all if our rv's! Momma is still happy with her 25 minute showers and I don't mind the extra time under that hot water to loosen up these old bones before bedtime. I've seen some other reviews really ragging on this unit. Remember three things, you MUST provide a MINIMUM flow rate of 0.9 gpm as pulseless as possible or the flow sensor will not trip the control circuit. If, when adjusting your temperature at your plumbing fixture (shower/ sink) and the hot water side flow drops below 0.9 gpm, you will get hit with a slug of cold water. I prefer setting the temp at my desired water temp and running hot wide open. This prevents any undesired flow characteristics due to infamous low flow water fixtures associated with recreational vehicles. Finally, if you don't have shore connections, don't let your shower time get away from you or you'll have a full gray water tank before you know it. Remember, you'll also need to order a replacement door specific to the existing, EXISTING unit which you are replacing/retrofitting. This has been the absolute, best investment we have ever made towards improving our RV'ING experience! As a plumber, installation was fairly straightforward. Using existing 12vdc to my "old/new" 10 gallon Suburban in our new 2017 Columbus fifth wheel, the installation took about two hours. You will need to order a separate door for your existing opening/water heater make. If you are of average aptitude and mechanical skill, you should be able to do a self install. If you have any apprehension, whatsoever, have a pro install. Today, I took my first ever, 10 minute shower in my fifth wheel, as did my wife. The heater does have a minimum 0.9 gpm flow rate to fire. So, if you are using a pressure regulator for your shore connection, verify that you can get at least 1 gpm thru your shower head. I did the old bucket and stop watch trick and ended up at 1.5 gpm. I also used the existing 12vdc from my water heater switch on the control panel. You might see some complaints, but trust me, if you correctly install and provide proper water flow, you will LOVE THIS HEATER!

My wife and I are Full Time RV'rs. We roll in a 2016 Coachman Pursuit 32 ft Class A. Our hot water tank split and was totally trashed. After lots of research we opted to go tankless. Again, lots of research brought me to this unit. I have to tell you the install was very easy. If you have just basic skills and knowledge you can install this yourself. Make sure you have a roll of Butyl Tape and for us a small junction box. After removing the old unit, we installed a small junction box to connect the 12 volt power right off the furnace that sits next to the water heater. I also replaced both water line connections with new ones. I opted to use the steel mesh lines like the ones used on washer machines. Gas line connection was easy peasy. The only thing you don't get is the door cover. You can not use the old door cover because the exhaust system is completely different. The one that is recommended with this unit fit perfect. The gas usage is 100% more efficient than before. As you know throughout any 24 hour period the gas would light off and reheat the water in the tank as the temp dropped. And if you really needed to use it for say a shower, you need to shower fast. 6 Gallons does not last long. With tankless. The gas fires off ONLY when you open a hot water valve. After about 15 to 20 seconds you have wonderful hot water. This unit claims that it can run continuous for almost 2 hours. Have not tried it but our showers are now wonderful. The control panel is simple. It is preset at 115 degrees. you can change it up or down at your pleasure. We have found 115 is perfect for us. So far this has been a great unit and the replacement cost for my original unit, 6 gallons, gas fired.....was 811.00. So this purchase with the door, saved me 300,00. Its a great unit and we love it!!!!

The monitor allows for simple adjustment of the water temperature. It is a great feature. The monitor also has a red LED and a green LED. Nowhere in the instructions does it explain the meaning of the LED’s. Apparently, the red LED means that the unit is armed. I still don’t know what the green LED means but I can switch it off and on. It doesn’t seem to matter.I bought this to replace a 6-gal tank unit which froze and burst. When I opened the Girard's white control box cover to inspect the circuit board, I found that the blower wiring harness was pinched during assembly between the box housing and the box cover possibly damaging the wires: just another example of lousy workmanship, poor supervision, and lack of quality control. To be fair, I find poor workmanship and manufacturing defects everywhere I go. Winterization is a problem because there is no way to drain the unit without draining the water system and blowing air through it. Otherwise, you need to maintain LP gas and 12V DC power to the unit to protect itself, or antifreeze the whole water system. This is important because if you drive/pull your RV through freezing temperatures, the heat exchanger could freeze because it is exposed to the outside air through the door vent and your propane needs to be shut off when you are on the road. I don’t like that because the rest of my water system is insulated and my fresh water tank is electrically heated to prevent freezing so that I can camp in freezing weather with liquid water, even without propane, and I wouldn’t have to drain the whole water system (and blow air through it) every time I drive through the mountains or spend a cold night in the desert without propane on. How is one going to blow air through the heat exchanger when on the road? Hot water tanks, by comparison, are insulated and come with a drain plug. This on-demand unit needs a drain valve so I tapped my water line at the lowest point next to the Girard unit and installed my own drain just for the hot water circuit. I may have voided the warranty by doing this but the warranty does not cover damage due to freezing. See attached photos. UPDATE This water heater works great and has the best features. I found a defective pipe weld but I still think this product merits 4.625 stars. To be fair, I find defects in EVERYTHING! I sprung a leak in the water inlet pipe that the pressure relief valve is connected to. It happened when the temperature went down to 32°F for about an hour and I did not have 12Vdc power applied. The pipe that was damaged is only a $29-dollar part but a lot of work to replace. I highly recommend checking the pressure relief valve adjustment after installing the unit. This is not covered in the manual. It’s the thing that looks like a splined shaft in the bottom right. To adjust the pressure relief valve, turn the inside (core) of the relief valve with a flat screwdriver until water comes out with water pressure applied, then turn the core until the water stops. When I installed my unit, I also installed a drain valve in the lowest part of my hot water system so I would not have trouble winterizing in storage but I eventually discovered that I could have accomplished the same thing by removing the pressure relief valve assy by unscrewing it from the joint on the water inlet pipe. You can accomplish this by turning the splined shaft counterclockwise until it separates from the water inlet pipe. You will still need to blow some air through the system to get all of the water out. For all-season use, I think this is better than using an tank-type unit.

So far, very happy with this tankless heater. It's working fantastic. If the rv is on a full hookup site, you can take as long a shower as you want as you don't have to worry about your grey tank getting full. Things I learned during the install and first couple weeks of usage. Regardless of where you set the water temperature, it's going to heat the water a minimum of 25 degrees. No problem If your water comes out of the ground nice and cool. I'm in the Florida Keys and the water comes out of the ground hot. Results in a scalding hot shower. My solution is to fill my on-board fresh water tank in the morning and use your fresh water tank and on board pump to shower. Once the water was in my fresh water tank for a few hours, it cooled down and showers were fine. Like I said earlier, this won't be a problem in most of the other campgrounds I've been to. Tank works better using my 12v water pump because it creates more water pressure than the water supply in the campground I'm currently at. Again, won't be an issue most other places. Water pressure here is very, very poor. Both of those issues only apply for showering. For hot water for dishes and laundry, it works just fine off the low water pressure in the campground. Propane usage is good in my opinion. I've got two 30lb propane tanks. I've got three people in the RV showering daily and handwashing and doing dishes and such. I'm using about 10% of a 30lb bottle of propane a week. You would use no propane with an electric tank, but with this unit, you can can a long, hot shower if you want. Install is easy. Buy the correct door to install. The gas line for the old hot water tank hooked right up to this one. I had to add about 12 inches of pex to the water lines because the water input and output were on the opposite side of the old tank that was removed. No problem as pex is super easy to work with. The 12v line that went to the old hot water tank was reused to power this one. I removed the 110v romex going to the old tank and shut the breaker off. So far, very happy. Hopefully I works for several years. Only time will tell.

Installed 1 year now and I can’t wait till it breaks so I can replace it with hopefully something that works right. It works just enough to keep me from ripping it out of my RV and throwing it in the dumpster for the amount of money I paid for it. Here’s the problem, it can’t keep up with any sensible amount of water flow. I set it at 120F, I bought an expensive commercial grade water regulator after the cheap ones didn’t help. I’ve adjusted the built in regulator and it still can’t keep up. At first it could keep up with the kitchen sink, but never the shower. After 1 year of use it can’t even keep up with the kitchen sink now. I have to turn the hot flow on the shower so far down that hot water only trickles out for it to reach anything over 90 degrees. Turn the water flow a hair up and it will not heat anywhere near my 120 degree set point. Turn the water down to a trickle and I can walk it up to about 118 degrees but if I turn the water pressure down any lower its built in sensor doesn’t see the water flow and it shuts down completely. The water flow is such a balancing act that what tends to happen is when my hair and face are covered in shampoo it thinks there’s no water flow and it shuts down, instantly blasting you with freezing cold water. If I increase the hot water flow it can’t heat the water fast enough. It almost works like a dream, it just needs a few tweeks in its design to be perfect, but as it is its worthless and will anger even the most passive person trying to use it to take a hot shower. They just need to slightly increase the size or capacity of the heat exchanger portion so it can keep up with normal water flow and pressure. They also need to make the water flow sensor a little more sensitive to lower water flow so when you do have to turn it down lower to keep up it doesn’t just shut off. I can not believe they didn’t see these obvious problems with it during the testing phase prior to putting into production and on the market, they were so close to nailing it.

This tankless water heater got to us in good shape and was simple to install. Previous to purchasing this unit we purchased a Fogatti unit first mainly because of its dimensions (the vertical opening in our RV is only 12.5") as most of the others were too tall. Unfortunately I didn't think to check the size of the door it came with and when it got to us I could immediately tell the width of the door wouldn't cover our opening so we sent it back and kept looking. This Girard was stated in the Amazon ad as being the correct dimensions to fit our opening but we couldn't find a mention of a door/cover being included. What was confusing was that the main group of product photos included one that gave the unit dimensions as 12.5" X 12.5" X 13.75" (this was the only other unit we could find that fit our opening) but when you scroll down and look at the item description it gives the product dimensions as 14.5" X 17.8" X 14.6" (?!?) This seemed to possibly reference the dimensions of a door but we could find no mention of an included door plus our just previous experience with the Fogatti unit had a door included in a separate box inside the main box, so we assumed a door came with this one as well. It did not. To cut this short, we ordered the correct size door (there are two sizes) but once the door got to us the instructions mandate the unit be moved all the way to the right side for the door to fit the opening correctly and in our case a water fitting, that could not be moved, prevented the unit from being properly placed. Just to be clear, this is a quality water heater in every sense and to this point is operating flawlessly. This next part was pretty frustrating: Tweety's charged us $10 to ship the door to us, when we went to ship it back the cheapest price available was $25. We declined to pay that much as the door only cost $48. Tweety's did not opt to cover shipment back to them saying that shipping costs are rising(!) Bottom line is: make sure you perform due diligence to know as much as you can about what you are buying. Even then it's tough to get all the answers up front. Good luck

Very nice all I had to enter was the model number. Back to non stop hot water in the camper. Thanks

A great product. It installed perfectly with no modifications to the connections from the old water heater. It was an easy install and makes tons of hot water. No more military showers for me! I highly recommend this to anyone with an old tank style water heater in their RV! Here is an update after using this for a month now. Overall I am still very happy with this. I've noticed a few things that I want to mention. First, I did have a couple of days where the unit would not provide 120 degree water. I was in Yellowstone camping about about 6800 feet. The inlet water temp was 44 degrees and it would only make 97 degree water. When you buy gas appliances you have to remember that they are 'de-rated' at altitude... What this means is that as you go up in elevation the actual amount of heat (BTU's) that any gas appliance can supply is reduced, sometimes significantly. Most gas appliances are rated in BTU's 'at sea level' and at 6800 feet. It's somewhere between 2-4% per 1000 feet, so at 6800 feet (6.8 thousand) and say 3% loss is about 20%. In the case of this unit it is rated at 42000 BTU's and 20% of that is about 8400 BTU's. So the approximate amount of heat (BTU's) the unit can supply is something around 33600 BTU's which with an inlet temp of 42 degrees and about 1.2 gallons per minute of flow it couldn't heat the water to the desired temp. I tried reducing the flow rate and it wouldn't make 120 degree water. Also I tried showering by the old military method because I was boondocking and running on my water tank... You know, get wet, turn off the water, soap, rinse. Every time I stopped the water flow I would get an error code and the unit would need to be reset. I'm still researching this problem and will update this again when I figure it out. I'm still really happy with the unit and recommend it. Just keep in mind that you may have times where it wont make the desired temp. If you spend a ton a time camping at higher altitudes you may want to carefully consider other units.

I'm in BC and winter temps get to -10c max in my area. Unit worked well at that temperature on 40 PSI water. The freeze protection worked well. What is important to remember with these heaters is that they need consistent water flow to get the most consistent (and hot) temperature. In my case, park water is consistent at 40 PSI. The heater works well at that pressure pretty much any time of year. In the winter, the inlet water temp is close to freezing. That means the heater has a harder time making it hotter than in the summer when the inlet water temp is warmer. So...ideally you want less flow in the winter, and more flow in the summer. That gets you lower pressure in the winter and higher pressure in the summer. I tend to like high water pressure so I tend to run off the pump. What I did was restrict the water flow to the heater with a flow restrictor rated at 1 GPM. I then use a Remco Aquajet pump rated at 5.5 GPM. So the pump is overkill. As such, the pump tends to cycle which means the temperature and pressure in the shower fluctuates because the pressure fluctuates. An accumulator will help smooth that out a great deal of you have a large one. Mine is 7 gallons. But it does still fluctuate. I addressed that by adding a PWM controller to the power feed to the pump. What Pulse Width Modulation does is allow you to adjust the speed at which the pump runs. In other words, with the shower on full hot, I can adjust the speed of the pump so that it remains below the cut-out point and maintains the same pressure for the entire shower. This means the water heater sees even flow the entire time and the highest possible pressure without fluctation. In the winter I slow the pump to 30% and in the summer I can run it at 70%. I slow it to 30% in the winter so the water stays in the heat exchanger for a longer period of time. It can be sped up in the summer because the incoming water temp is much higher. You don't need to do anything elaborate like that. I found that if you limit the pressure to 40-42 PSI it works fine all year round. Most inexpensive pumps run at that pressure and you can easily install an adjustable water pressure regulator on your inlet and set it to the same. You should have one of those anyway.....to protect your unit from parks with very high pressure. I do have an issue with the ECO triggering an E3 error from time to time. E3 means that the water temp in the exchanger is over 140F and it shuts down to protect you from burns. This is exacerbated by running the heater at 124F which I like. The E3 is triggered by a thermostatic snap switch that breaks the circuit. This is a common snap disk that can be gotten on Amazon. I will try a 160F snap disk and I bet that will case it. I like the heater. It does work. Just bear in mind, if you're not seeing the temps you think you should, or you think it's a POS, adjust the water pressure going to it to 40-42 PSI and you should find it works well. It really is that simple. Installation is also very easy. The only reason I post my way of doing it is because I like high pressure and water temperature. Right now I have 90 PSI water pressure that fills the sink very fast with a temperature that is just scalding. In other words, perfect for me. Edit: 2 Year Update Unit still works perfectly. It hasn't caused an issue other than, at times, when it rained heavy, the unit would struggle to light. This turned out to be a wire lying on floor of the unit that was sitting in water (the electrical connector was wet). Solution was to tie it up off the floor of the unit with a tie-strap. Problem solved. I've been through -17c with this unit and had no freeze up and hot showers. I'd love to replace it with a newer larger unit but it's been so reliable I'm hesitant to do so. My only beef is that a larger 60K BTU unit would be better, but then I have to plumb a larger gas line, and the other is the 20 minute timer. The unit shuts off after 20 minutes and I really need 30. It's no big deal, you just have to shut off the shower, wait a few moments, and then turn it back on. Bottom line, it's been rock-solid and the freeze protection has always worked through 3 winters now. Very good unit if a little on the small side and the 20 minute timer.

Had to replace my old 6 gallon tank. Decided to go tankless because it seemed like a better option over heating water continuously, and we found it at a good price. Not that we consume a lot of water when camping, but now we are not limited to 6 gallons of hot water, we're limited to how much we have left in our freshwater tank. Installation was fairly straightforward instructions were good and there's also videos online. Anyone with basic plumbing skills shouldn't have too much trouble doing this install. There is a little bit of a learning curve to getting the water pressure right with input versus output temperature, especially in cold weather when you're hovering just above freezing. It did work more than well enough for a hot shower in the camper when the campground showers were out of order and the outdoor temperature was around 4° c. 99% of our hot water usage is for doing dishes. As there is a bit of a lag between turning on the tap and hot water arriving, we use a basin to catch the cooler water until it gets up to temperature and use that as rinse water, thus saving on some water waste. Overall we are quite happy with this, and would install a tankless system again if the need ever came up again.

Update after 2 years of use: Well, it turns out it can't handle the cold water coming from our well during the fall & winter. It struggled to get the temp above 41°C, and in the deep -30°C it froze a few times and struggled to get the water above 37°C, despite it's freeze protection. During the spring and summer this unit has been flawless and only had a part break once. Support is good when you call in, so I still back this company, I just wish they could output more BTU! Also, the 2nd tankless I use for my heated floors works, but can't get the temperature high enough to warm my floors enough since it shuts off when hot water is detected coming into the unit. Initial Review Below: There are tons of tankless systems our there and it's definitely hard to choose. We ended up going with this one because it's specifically winterized (automatically clicks on to prevent the heat exchange from freezing) and because the igniter is 12v powered, making it ideal for off-grid setups like mine. The installation is pretty simple; you cut a 13" x 13" hole and slide it in, hookup the gas line, water inlets/outlets and the 12V wires, and you're basically done. You can also easily wire the display somewhere other than where the heater is, so to adjust the temp you don't need to goto the back shed as pictured in my photos. The unit does not come with a door like in my pictures; you have to buy that separately. That may seem annoying, but I think the unit would just be priced higher if it did, and perhaps some people don't need the door at all. I'm not sure. The unit has worked well every time, and we get hot water in about 3 - 6 seconds after turning it on. Considering the water we're piping into it is quite cold coming from a well, I think that's pretty efficient. We tend to fill a bucket with the first bit of cold water and pour that into our Berkey to use for drinking water. I haven't used the unit for more then about 3 months so far, so we'll see how it performs in our cold Canadian winters where we can experience -30C. The water heater has beeped a few times and an error shows on the display. Simply turning off the faucet and turning it back on seemed to fix it. Could be to do with the flow rate, again, not sure. I'm actually purchasing a 2nd one of these to pump hot water into a tank that we'll be using in a closed loop system for hydronic heated floors. Wow, that sentence was a mouthful. Will report back to see if it all works out! We couldn't figure out a way to use one water heater for both applications, since the heated floors need to contain corn-based glycol to prevent them from freezing. I'm not a plumber or electrician and have very little experience with this stuff, and was still able to get it all working, so you should too! Good luck.

Now that we have survived extreme cold weather, -40 for almost a week I thought it was time to give a review. I was nervous knowing what our Winters could be like, but I bought it anyways. When I contacted the dealer for tips for cold weather they told me I should shut it down. Which was not an option. When we hit zero my neighbor told me to turn on the tap and let it drip. So I did. Around -10 there was a day that I accidentally turned it off and the unit froze. I opened the hot water tap then went outside turned off the unit and with my blow dryer, heated up the unit until I could hear the water running and then turned the unit back on. As the temperatures dropped I opened the tap a little bit more until there was a steady light flow but without igniting the unit on. FD - freeze detector comes on regularly. Other than me shutting off the tap I've had no concerns. As we crept up past -30 a new error code showed S2- which means the unit is struggling to ignite. At first I would just turn the tap on and then that seem to trigger the pilot light and bring heat and the unit would be fine but, then I noticed my furnace was starting to struggle. And through troubleshooting I came to learn that propane doesn't properly convert to gases when it becomes -30 or colder out. So I wrapped my propane tank, wrapped the copper lines from the tank to my home and put a small space heater on low in my undercarriage. So all in all, no issues with the unit it survived -40 - if you live in similar conditions the key is to keep the water running. And if you hit -30 or colder keep the propane tank insulated. Would definitely recommend!

First, they don't mention it comes without a door, because there are just too many kinds of doors. I would have ordered the right one with the heater. Second, even though it is easy to install with step by step instructions....it has never worked. Well, when I was trying to figure it out it worked once. But never again. It originally looked like I needed a water sensor, not a ridiculous price, but not available anywhere. So phoned for help, got through after a while, first thing he tells me is to get my multi-meter out and he will tell me how to find all of the different voltage's..........I was no where near the machine, so we had to end the session. I have not had a day off when I could phone back. I have looked for a dealership, there are not that many, unless you consider a 2 hour drive, one way, close. My problems I guess, I'll get to a dealer one day, maybe when I have a week day off in the far, far future.