Product Review: The Steibel Eltron SHC 4 Point of Use Water Heater
The Steibel Eltron SHC 4 Point of Use Water Heater
Used in the FreeShare Tiny House
This is the second water heater by Steibel Eltron that we have purchased. Stiebel Eltron is a German company and we used an on demand electric model at our self built home in Maine. They’re great machines by a quality company. When we moved into our tiny home, we needed a small water heating unit and originally went with a Bosch-Ariston GL6, which had very good reviews online. It leaked. It was replaced with another one. It leaked too. The design of the model we had just wasn’t great. We opted to return the bad heater and went back to the German made Stiebel Eltron, but in a (less than) four gallon size that fits underneath our counter tops and supplies us with a perfect amount of very hot water. The Stiebel-Eltron SHC 4 heats rapidly, noiselessly, and has a very sensitive temperature gage that lets you control how hot your water gets. It can get very hot, there are no problems with cold showers. Four gallons sounds like a very small amount of hot water, but the tank reheats in less than half an hour (it has a light that lets you know when it is actively heating). For showering comfort, we combined this water heating unit with an ultra low flow shower head from Bricor (.5 gals/min) and we are able to take nearly 15 minute showers, if we so desire. It’s a great combo and highly recommended. There are no leaks associated with the Steibel Eltron because all the water hook ups are on top of the unit rather than on the side, as with the Bosch unit. It’s also built well (and surprisingly in the EU).
I would recommend this as an area to seriously examine design as water leaks are very demoralizing, particularly if you want to have a hot shower to wash your stress away. The Stiebel Eltron has been a real winner for us in this new application. The 4 gallon unit doesn’t have a tremendous energy demand either, although if you are using a 20 or 30 amp service, like us, you might want to give it its own line of electricity. We originally hooked up the oven and the water heater on the same circuit and had the breaker pop, so we rewired. Just a thought if the situation applies to you!