Customer Reviews

Bosch GL4 Ariston 4-Gallon Point-of-Use Indoor Electric Mini-Tank Water Heater

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If your living in a place like mine where your hot water heater is a long way from the kitchen sink, then you are probably going crazy like I was waiting and waiting for the hot water to finally get to the faucet. There are technical ways to remedy this, but they involve a lot of plumbing, auxiliary pumps, and ripping half your house apart. Since I rent, I was thinking that the landlord wouldn't take to kindly to this idea. So I started casting about for a better solution.

That's when I came up with the idea of putting a little water heater as close to the kitchen faucet as possible. With this, the hot water is right there where you need it. No waiting and wasting a lot of water while running the faucet so that a half mile of plumbing warms up.

'Only problem is a tiny tank has very limited capacity. If you're only washing a dish or two like me, then no problem. But if you wash a sink full of dishes, it will quickly run out.

But the trick is to hook this little heater right in line with the hot water supplied from the big tank. As you draw hot water, cold water will go into the small heater, but only for a gallon or two. Then as you continue to draw hot water, the small heater now has hot water being supplied to it, so the hot water just keeps on coming.

I checked around with local suppliers and found small hot water heaters, but most were kinda short and stubby and wouldn't fit under the sink well at all. But I stumbled upon this neat deal from Ariston. It's a nice clean design, well insulated, and fits under the sink extremely well. I also felt that the price was very reasonable considering how nice it is. The funny thing is, it seems to be specifically designed for exactly the idea I had in mind. It was a snap to install.

So you may be thinking: Yeah. This all looks good in theory, but does it really work? I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but I have to tell you that this is one of those rare times when an idea I have actually works better than imagined. I've done small loads and big. The hot water is right there (immediately!) when you need it. And for all practical purposes it appears to be an infinite supply. I've had it in now for about 3 weeks and marvel each time I go to wash out a dish or two. Incredible! Don.

This mini-tank water heater works very well and we love not having to wait for hot water at the kitchen sink. The form-factor is also very convenient for mounting under the kitchen sink, unlike some other small point-of-use water heaters.

I have this hooked up inline with a gas tankless water heater and I wanted to know how much this new heater was costing me in electricity, so I hooked up a meter to check it out for a few weeks. It turns out that, with our normal usage, it uses just about 5 KWH/week - which works out to about $2/month in our area.

Before this heater, we had to run a full 2 gallons of water down the drain before getting hot water to the sink - which was both a big pain and somewhat wasteful. With this 4 gallon heater, we basically have an instant and endless supply of hot water at the sink since the hot water from the main tankless unit arrives before the water cools too noticeably. I've also noticed that it seems to heat water on it's own very quickly.

The biggest problem with this water heater is how much of a pain it is to set the thermostat. You basically have to remove 3 panels and then turn a dial that isn't labeled at all. In order to get it set to the same temperature as my main water heater, I ended up using an instant-read thermometer and moving the thermostat dial as I filled the tank with cold water and let it reheat it to the set temp. The process took a while, but I shouldn't have to do that again.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the purchase and would recommend this water heater.

Edit: It is now February, 2010 and this water heater has been installed for almost 2 years. It is still working perfectly and I haven't had to mess with it at all since the initial installation.

Edit #2: It is now November, 2011. Once again, this water heater continues to work perfectly and I still haven't had to mess with it since the initial install.

Ever since we moved into our new house my wife has complained about how long it took the hot water to get to the kitchen sink from the hot water heater in the garage. Since installing the Ariston GL 4, she has been ecstatic!! Hot water is instant. It is such a pleasure not to have her complain about our former water problem. Even when I am "forced" to do the dishes, I can't complain about our lack of hot H2O. Installation was easy except for the ill-fitting two top fittings. They will accept the hose extentions (hardware store), but you must be firm and patient. It took away alot of our storage space beneath the sink, but it was worth it.

I've had two of these Ariston water heaters and they work very well as a booster on a long hot water line. However, the first one we had developed a leak after about 5 years. Both had the problem that they added a significant amount of sediment to the hot water line. I think this was either from a sacrificial anode or from corrosion to the tank. Either way, the sediment kept clogging up the filters on my sink faucet and washing machine and dishwasher. The dishwasher clog led to worse problems. The intake valve got clogged and failed to shut off the water going into the dishwasher. This led to a small flood, which luckily, I was able to spot before the entire house was destroyed. It did do some damage to our kitchen floor, which now needs refinishing. After that, we removed the hot water heater and replaced it with an on-demand recirculating pump. No more problems with clogs, and less use of electricity. Moral of the story: If you are going to use this heater, don't have it supply anything more than a sink!

A lot of the reviews cite this product for use in addition to their water heaters for added hot water. However, if you are flat broke, without money to buy propane/gas or the electricity to run an electric water heater, then this is for you! We went three years with no hot water, having to heat it in canners on top of the stove and then carry it to the destination. With this heater we have plenty of hot water to wash dishes, wash your hands, whatever you need! When it runs out of water it takes about 30 min to heat again, but when we're just using it like you normally would throughout the day, we never run out of hot water. Now, in the winter when someone wants to take a bath, we heat one 4 gallon canner of water and then run the 4 gallons from the heater and get a piping hot bath! Since getting this for Christmas, we have not noticed any change in our electric bill. In the summer I think that the heater alone provide enough water for a bath (doesn't need to be as hot). We are even considering getting another one of these to use in the winter.
Okay, so the temperature is hard to adjust, I did it once (turned it to high) and I don't see why I ever need to adjust it again? To save electricity, when we're not home or at night, it has a on/off switch in the red bubble on the front that I just flip off. So instead of adjusting the temp (like you would on a regular water heater) to save energy, just turn the thing off!
Well worth the investment! Good luck!

I installed this in the basement about 18 feet under a second floor bathroom where hot water previously had to travel 60 feet. I rigged it so the old hot water line goes into the Ariston. My wife is now happy. She gets hot water in a minute instead of five. Installation was not bad if you have some plumbing skills. I got this model because of the 120v plug in. I do a lot of DIY but I'm not into running 220 lines. Hope I get many many years out of this.

This water heater works very well, outperforming the old InSinkErator 4 gallon model I had. It seems to put out more hot water, in spite of having the same capacity. The heating element lasts longer too. What doesn't seem to last so long, or work so well, is the thermostat. The first one failed, and the second one doesn't hold a consistent temperature.

I am very pleased with the 2 units I purchased. They were very easy to install and are producing point-of-use hot water for me without the need to run hot water lines throughout the building. Not suited to a medium or high flow location but works just fine for supplying hot water to our clean-up sinks in the school.

I have 2 tankless water heaters in my house (one on each end of the house). I added a 6 gallon tank to one of them to see if it would allow me to get hot water faster while the tankless water heater starts to heat up. I purchased an A.O.Smith for this and it worked great. For 4 years it has plugged away and I've never thought about it for a second. I've never had to touch it even one time so it's covered in dust and spider webs. I love it.

Two years later, I asked the plumber to put the exact same water tank into my house on the other tankless water heater. Instead, he installed this one by Ariston (Bosch). After I saw what he did, I told him this wasn't the same brand, but he assured me that this was far better. It was *NOT* better.

From the very beginning, the thermostat circuit kept triggering and shutting off because it said the water was too hot. Even when I turned it down to a very low temperature, it kept triggering. I would have to run down the basement and reset the tank. After many months of this and calls to the plumber, he told me to call their customer service line. Ariston (owned by Bosch) sent me a new thermostat and told me to install it. I installed it with some difficulty because the instructions on how to do this were terribile.

It fixed the problem for about 6 months, then it started triggering again. At first occasionally. Now it triggers every day. I get lots of exercise running the stairs. I assure you that I'm monkeying with this thing so much that it doesn't have any dust or spider webs on it. It's squeaky clean.

I called tech support and asked for a new thermostat again. They told me that my warranty expired and I was on my own. The guy on the phone, Scott, was rude and condescending.

His "help" to me consisted of accusing me of not reading the manual and not using the unit as described. He spent about 30 minutes on the phone being rude, interrupting me, and being sarcastic. I try to be polite with customer service and tech support so I did not reciprocate as Scott seemed to want to draw me into an argument. This is the kind of person that they hire for customer service???

Finally, Scott said that I was going to have to remove the unit from the wall, drain the water, pull out the heating coil and examine it for damage. I explained to Scott that I am not a plumber and I didn't feel comfortable unbolting a water heater from the wall, draining it, and disassembling it. Also, I said that even if I did that then I wouldn't know what a bad heating unit even looked like. I asked him if Ariston would reimburse me for the cost of hiring a plumber to do this and he said that they would not.

I then told him that I was going to have the unit replace with an A.O.Smith brand like I have on the other side of the house and that I would write a bad review on Amazon and Angie's List. Here it is.

From the other reviews that I have read on Amazon, others find this to be a good water tank. But it seems like I got a lemon. Ariston customer service did not stand behind the product or try to help me out. Instead, they were rude and confrontational.

When I purchase a product like this, I don't expect to spend the rest of my life babysitting it. I just want to buy it, install it, and then forget that it even exists.

This is not such a water heater.

Also, if I end up with a lemon, I want the company to realize that those things will happen occasionally and stand behind the product and help fix the situaiton. This was not my experience. This was terrible customer service.

Please do yourself a favor and get a different brand.

When our hot water heater went out I began gathering information on water heaters. Because I am on a well and live in a draught stricken area watching 4 gal. of water go down the kitchen drain every time I needed hot water was nerve racking. I was considering putting the new water heater on the back porch closer to the kitchen and redoing the plumbing. Then I saw this little gem. It is the only one I saw that you could install in line with your house hot water. My daughter had the same problem so I bought 2. It wash't bad to hook up. Our biggest problem was pulling out our dishwasher so my husband could change something and give me a plug in for it. We both love them. Turn the knob, hot water. The fact that it is in line with my big water heater I thought was a real plus and no one had to change around any plumbing or look at a water heater on the back porch.