Kenmore Elite  50 gal. 12-Year Natural Gas Water Heater  ENERGY STAR®

Well everything else I wrote just got erased. I guess I will go into the problems. The water was not holding the heat. We had placed the tempature at 120 & did not have enough Hot Water. Sears came by & said that in the Winter, the temp should be adjusted up to 140-150 degrees, which differs some the instruction in the booklet, but seems to work. The other problem that I have is that the HOT water in the shower does not seem to hold the temp. By that I mean that I start with a certain temp, & after a while I have to start making it hotter. That just should NOT happen on the top model that Sears sells. I am not a plumber, but I think the problem may be that the cold inlet may be to short allowing the cold water to start mixing with the hot. I WILL ALSO ADD THAT I CAN NOT UNDERSTAND FOR THE LIFE OF ME WHY ON 1 OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE MODELS THAT THE COLD WATER INLET IS NOT WHAT SEARS CALLS A ROTOSWIRL. THAT IS THAT THE COLD INLET GOES TO THE BOTTOM OF THE TANK (AWAY FROM THE HOT OUTLET& SI

Count on finishing every shower with cool water. The hot water heater works correctly and was installed per the manual. In operation, though, it doesn't regain heat in use quickly enough. It's exhausted in one shower. It has a fan which comes on when it's reheating. The hot water heater is located in the basement. While not particularly loud, it's loud enough to be annoying on the main floor when in operation. Besides the noise volume, the fan has a whine to it which is especially bad. This thing cost a lot of money, and when I can afford to, I'm going to replace it. It's unsatisfactory for lack of recovery and excessive noise.

Well after 21+ years my KENMORE Survivor Series -Model# 449-330511- has stopped. The ignitor clicks but no "Flame-On" (line from Fantastic Four), so what do we do? For those not familiar with these series, it has a poly outer case...no rusting out. It's been a GREAT unit. But what compare now; or is repairing an option? I guess the worse part is Sears can't get a serviceman here for a WEEK and residing in SE Michigan that seems very unreasonable. With our economy being in the state it is, purchasing one with somewhat comparable features is out of the question for the family and I. The energy cost on this old Survivor was rated @ $132 annual, which was outstanding, nothing like that is even avail. now. BUT I will, if needed, purchase another KENMORE water heater with no question....other then cost.

The hotwater heater was picked up at my local Sears store after on-line purchase the same day. I installed it with a helper with three flexible ss hoses after a bit of cut and soldering and flue sealing. Plugged it in and...hot water! It took about an hour to install. Love the digital display with the ease of temp adjustment for vacations etc. But most of all I like knowing that I'll be saving money by saving gas with no standing pilot. The water heater being replaced was a Kenmore that lasted more than 25 years. After recovering from the cost of this new Hi Tech model, I hope to get 25+ years more.

Sears gave us a big trade up value on their old 2001 Water Heater, Unbelievable!

Twice the available water and big savings on energy!

Thanks

I purchased this water heater and it has all the features and characteristics I wanted - 50 Gal, Energy Star, Natural Gas and 12 year warranty. It has an electric ignition, which I didn't care about. But, I assessed that all the Energy Star rated water heaters use the electric ignition to reduce the gas used as compared with the standard pilot light. I had to install an electrical outlet in the utility closet where the installation was done.

Biggest issue with the overall experience was the installation. We live in Houston and the city requires permits, understandable! We had scheduling conflicts and technical debates in advance of the installation. Scheduling was a pain. The guarantee to install within 24 hours was a laugh. Besides the typical four hour window, which they missed, they offered to be at my house at 10:00 pm, really! Sears only has one installer in our half of the city. So they have no options to switch to a different installer. It then took a couple more days to get them out there. It turned into a 74 hour guarantee.

The installation company's employees, while polite, made the process frustrating. I imagine that they run in to all kinds of challenges with replacing old equipment that is no longer up to code. For instance, they initially told me that this equipment needed to be installed in a space that was 10' X 10' square. Completely wrong. This required me to read the product manual and correct them on the specific install requirements. Ventilation can be handled various ways.

The Sears installation fee of $229, which literally covers delivery, unpacking, connecting the three hoses (2 water and 1 gas) and plugging it in. Bringing the installation up to city code requirements and replacing older hoses cost another $700+ and took about an hour and half. Pretty good per hour rate for the plumber and he didn't even clean up after himself.

Sears offered me a $50 gift card for the slow install. Yippee!

Easy installation to replace a 12-year old hydronic system.  Be careful of vertical dimensions to get venting to fit.

Note - the blower motor on the water heater is quite noisy (blower is on when the heater is on).  Fortunately, the w/h is installed in the garage, so noisy blower isn't a problem.   Also, the electronic control unit buzzes constantly.  Again, it's in the garage, so doesn't matter, but if this is in your house, it could be a problem.

Very pleased with how quickly it heats water, and digital thermostat makes it easy to set according to your needs.

Owners manual does not say what the electrical draw is, which might be an issue if you are plugging this in to an existing circuit (yes, you need an electrical outlet even for a gas w/h.)

Yes, as the other reviewer mentioned it does need to be connected to a standard 110VAC 15amp electrical outlet. It comes with a standard plug like 99% of the electrical items in the household. I suspect it uses less than 1 amp when the fan is running, because the fan is fairly quiet. It's not a whisper fan, so it does make some noise - but the noise is quiet enough that it shouldn't bother anyone.

For those of us who are concerned about frequent power outages, a small generator should keep this running along with the household refrigerator.

But it holds 50 gallons of hot water, set to the temperature that you select. So you can probably do a lot of hot-water things around the house before you run out of heated water.

The label says the recovery time on this unit is 42.6 gallons per hour, so in theory if you started with no hot water you'd have a full tank of hot water in a bit over an hour - that's pretty quick.

It's a 40,000 BTU/hour natural gas input, which was the same as the one we replaced - so we had no plumbing changes to make.

We also had an electrical outlet nearby, so we didn't have any electrician charges during installation.

Our unit was installed about 5 months ago, and it's still working just fine.

We thought this would be a great water heater, but when the plumber arrived to install it, he said it would be an additonal $250 for an electrician to install a separate electrical recepticle and an electrical city work permit.  The overall cost of our water heater would have been over $1600.....

And that if the power went off, like happens from time to time in stormy season, we'd need to reset the water heater, and that when the electricity was out, we'd have no hot water even though we'd have a gas water heater.

We decided to return this promising water heater and purchased a conventional type instead......  We are green, but this was too many surprises.