RTEX-04T

Easy to install and keeps our water hot!! After a bad experience with our last one (different brand) we are so impressed with this one and hope it last us a long time! We have a 3bd 2ba and it keeps up with our water!

I replaced a 55 gallon hot water tank with this unit, I bought a little larger unit than what the ratings said I needed to be safe. Make sure you check your electrical panel to make sure you have room for 3 x 40 double pole 40 amp circuit breakers. I didn’t have enough room, had to add a sub panel plus had to run 9 x 8 gauge wires the unit requires. I’m pretty handy, but asked a certified electrician to help me with the pre wiring. To be honest, I would have been afraid to try and do this myself even with all my experience. Installation was pretty simple after you have the wiring installed. Use 1 inch piping from your electrical panel to the tankless electrical unit or you won’t be able to pull the nine 8 gauge wires through the pipe. I also suggest having an electrical panel with a main breaker so you don’t have to shut the whole house down for the final install. Additionally i installed a surge protector to hopefully protect the unit from power surges which appears to have delicate electronics inside. We’ve only had this unit in operation for 4 days so far, but the water is really hot, have had no issues at this point and I love the added space gained without having the tank. Time will tell if we save 50% on energy, but from all my research it makes sense even with us living in a warm climate. There are several tankless unit manufacturers with great ratings, I went with Rheem because if I have an issue, they are based in the USA and hopefully that means English speaking in my time zone….. Hope my review is helpful to you. Update: it’s been 7 months, still works great, very happy with this decision even though I can say I’ve seen significant energy savings

I’ve installed three of these, and all have worked flawlessly. One of them provides adequate hot water for a small home (2 adults) having a shower, lavatory, kitchen sink, dishwasher, and clothes washer. Although it can draw up to 46 amps, the 100 amp main breaker has never tripped in spite of having an electric stove, air conditioner, clothes dryer, and refrigerator/freezer. The customers are delighted even after three years of constant use. A central location is important, as is minimizing piping bends. Be sure not to overtighten the compression fittings at the entrance and exit of the device. A clog in the shower head caused the heater not to work (as designed) due to low flow. My guess is that anyone having problems usually has an upstream or downstream issue not related to the proper performance of the heater.

I'll leave the original review below. It's been a little over 2+ years and have had to replace every single part and then finally replace the entire unit. Then the new one brand new out of the box did not work properly then finally fail 1yr and 2 months after purchase. This unit should be removed from sale and recalled that is how dangerous they are. If you have this unit installed I would highly recommend take it out and replacing with something else. It almost burned my house down! Just take a look at the pictures in this review and see for yourself. Okay full detail review below. 1st I'd like to say Rheem makes good products but this is not one of them. Here's why: 1st unit failed only less than 1 year of use. The elements exploded inside and needed to be replaced. Fine no problem, kill breaker, shut water off, unscrew 4 wires, take out element replace, re-screw wires, done in 30 minutes. Far beats dealing with a leaking water heater tank with 2 inches of water in your basement. Or lugging a 50lb broken tank up your stairs to replace at the Lowes or Home depot. Ok so I put the new elements in and it's heating again. Not more than a few months later the wire harness started arcing and fused together melting off and almost catching fire. I happened to see the arcing when the unit was on and didn't realize this was not part of how it operates. Thought it was just how it is. It tripped the breaker thankfully. I contacted the company and they sent me a new wire harness. I replaced it, still the unit wouldn't heat. So they sold me new inlet and outlet water sensors and a new flow sensor. That didn't fix it. So they said the motherboard must have fried. So I replaced the motherboard. That didn't fix it. So I purchased a completely new one. I mount the new one hooked it up and the water heater would stop heating randomly during a shower. So I set it to bypass mode 125 degrees and said "heck with the temp controls just give me heat" So a brand new unit I cannot even set the temperature. But I figured 125 is hot enough. Okay moving on. Fast forward to a few days ago, Sept 2nd 2023 brown colored water shot out of my shower head and I knew right away the heater blew. It made 1 year. I open the element rods and sure enough the 1st one exploded worse than any before. Okay no problem, let me swap it with a spare. So I did but.. I had to remove the entire unit from the wall and shake and empty out all the guts that exploded sitting inside the element housing. Still not that hard. So I did it see picture of sink.. EZPZ right? Nope, after repressurizing, a weld must have cracked and a slow drip came down the 1st pipe element housing. I thought maybe its not tight enough. So I tightened it more and the crack go worse and went from a small drip to a full stream. I confirmed it was coming from a welded joint not the threads on the element rod. Okay now the entire unit is trash and needs to be junked all because as I was tightening the element rod it put stress on the joints and cracked them. This is horrible quality in the build and should not happen. So I put the old one back in and swap every part. Wire harnesses, motherboard, elements and finally the sensors. Oh but the sensor's I tightened too much and they broke through the housing which also makes the entire unit useless as that cannot be repaired. So I threaded bolts into their holes and set it to bypass. I ordered a Mizudo instead which does not have copper housings, instead cast aluminum and does not have it's heating rods mixed with the water like this and many unit's have. So far it's been excellent. I highly recommend not purchasing these Rheem electric water heaters for 2 reasons. Fire hazard and quality. They constantly break. Amazon should remove this from their store before someone's house burns down and someone gets hurt or killed. Original Review Below I love this water heater. I really don’t have any complaints. Super easy to install. Takes up like no space. No more water tank to explode damaging my basement. It takes longer to get hot water at the furthest end of the house but it’s so worth it. Once it’s hot it stays hot and I can run a shower plus 2 faucets before I start losing heat. This one took 2 dbl 40amp breakers and it’s powerful enough to heat multiple faucets simultaneously. We never take more than 1 shower at a time anyway with a family of 4. Hasn’t been a problem keeping up with our hot water needs at all. And for the price? This is a great purchase. Ditch the tank! You’ll thank yourself later.

Working very well.

Installation was easy. It's only been up and running for about 2 weeks, but so far it's working great.

To get a hot full bath is more than enough. Very happy with this heater.

The unit was easy to install and I use the existing hot water tank as a preheat tank. We are on a well and the water is very cold coming up out of the ground, so I set the tank at minimum and it heats the well water to roughly ambient temperature. My gas bill has dropped by 70% and my electric bill has only risen about 3%. This is the only way to go!

Muy mal producto. No cumplió con lo esperado. Jamás calentó lo suficiente.