Rinnai V53DeP Propane Tankless Water Heater, 5.3 GPM, Outdoor Installation

Buy it. We have a much bigger rannai on primary residence and it is 12 years old and I've never serviced/flushed it as advised. We (2 teenagers me and wife) have had zero issues and the gals take lots of long showers, shave or whatever. Bought this one for a weekend tiny house/Park model RV/trailer. Much smaller capacity than my primary residence unit but happy to see it was the same quality, basic physical size and function . Just hook up 120v to unit for the ignighter, plumb in your gas and water lines and fire it up. Runs shower, kitchen faucet and bath faucet all on full hot with 115 deg water with no issue. Only have 3 fixtures so not sure how many more it could handle. Factory preset to 115 deg but changeable with dip switches to hotter or cooler. Came very securely packed. I installed service valves but will likely never service it. If I can get 12 plus years out of it without paying it any attention I'm happy. Doesn't come with a temperature controller but in 12 years we've only touched the one on my other unit when we moved it to paint the wall. We keep it set to 115 or maybe 120 default to be safe for any kids. That's too hot to hold your hand under anyway so never had a need to adjust. We have this unit plumbed to standard 20lb/30LB propane cylinders and it doesn't mind. Gained a free closet by replacing our tank unit with this one mounted on the outside wall instead of the inside wall.

Have had this up and running for almost a year. Have had no problems, works great. It’s outside and the lowest temperature it has seen is about 5 degrees. Worked great the whole time. No water pressure issues, and it gets hot very fast. 10/10 recommend

TLDR: This is now my favorite appliance in our entire house. Just buy it. I bought this to replace an ecotemp tankless hot water heater that leaked within a year of purchase. I was hesitant to spend an extra ~$200 on this unit, but I can honestly say it was worth it for sure. Showers: Incredible. This changed the way all of our showers work for the better. It's so effective that I can now balance my shower more on the "cold side" of the dial as opposed to turning it all the way to "hot" with my last hot water heater. This means that I have full cold water pressure at the same time as full hot water. This leads to a very high pressure, very satisfyingly steamy shower. Efficiency: In my case, this water heater will pay for itself in propane savings over a year. It's THAT good. Seriously, this thing uses less than half of the amount of propane on my last unit. Heat: It gets HOT. I called up Rinnai service to ask how to change the temperature from whatever the standard is to 140 degrees F. Customer support picked up immediately and was very knowledgeable. They walked me through it in less than 5 minutes and now I have HOT water for my dishes and laundry. Power: I can wash my car with steaming hot (140 dgF) water @ 60 PSI easily. The unit never chokes or gets cold. I can run a dual-head shower while running the dishwasher. Control: You can run a trickle of hot water with this unit. My last unit would only kick on if you had the hot water turned at least to half strength. This one has very fine controls, operating flawlessly at around .5 GPM.

Works great. But get a plumber !😄

We installed this on a shipping container Tiny Home. The pipe fittings were tight and well made. The installation confusion centers around the electrical connections. First, the rubber grommet where the power wires exits the unit obviously does not meet code fo an external application and the grey plastic fitting does not match any PVC thread size. Secondly, the wires themselves are only 20 gauge. These do not seem to meet any code out there however after much searching of the internet, it seems that even professional electricians just wire up to it. We connected 12 gauge wire with wire nuts inside the cabinet and called it a day. The electric connections are supposedly only used for the LED display and the spark that lights the flame so we assume that gauge internal wire is ok. As for the PVC connection, we saw varied approaches to try for a water tight connection and we came up with using a 1/2" Schedule 40 female threaded connector pvc glued into their plastic connector. This connects to Liquidtite connectors and from there using those connectors and pipe into the container. This is the best water tight installation we could come up with that meets code. Lastly, it functions perfectly and within 30 seconds the water is quite warm and within a minute quite hot. All in all a very good purchase and other than the electrical connection very easy to install. We would certainly recommend it to anyone considering a tankless heater.

i've worked with rinnai, bosch, and takagi tankless heaters. this little rinnai V53De is built with same high quality stuffs inside as the full sized units just the burner unit and exchanger are smaller. great deal for the buck. easy access to the flame rod for cleaning. this is critical if you have dirty propane. oily and wet propane will cause the flame rod to develop surface oxides, aka "rust". two screws and can access, lightly make shiny again with fine steel wool, replace, and all the "misfire" codes go away. for a few months, or years, depends on your propane. anyways, installed one for a client, she loves can shower full blast. note, this tiny unit will make most propane regulators overload and will misfire. you need to make sure your regulator can handle 200,000btu or more if you plan to run this unit to its full rating. a proper dual-stage regulator is a must. standard bbq size single stage regulator wont handle full load. works so good i got one for myself. couple hundred gallons thru it so far good.

We received ours with some cosmetic damage but still worked great and Rinnai customer service was awesome. Very happy with this company. This is our second heater through Rinnai (two separate houses) and they're fantastic especially for large families who go through some hot water!

great product

Have several of them. They work great, easy to install. Requires 3/4" propane line.

we bought this tankless hot water heater to replace the eccotemp we bought the heat exchanger leaked after a year this tank is so much better the pilefiter had it up and running in three hours from the box I love it so much I am buying another one for our RV great value