I RARELY leave reviews for products I buy on Amz. But I felt obligated to leave one for this heater. Yes, it’s expensive, no I haven’t tried the cheaper models like Mr. Heater etc. I researched all of them, and the reviews and researching Rinnai on Google, I couldn’t find one bad thing written about them. These heaters frequently rate as the #1 heater on top ten lists. After getting it hooked up and running, I see why! The heat output was instantly notable. I live in a 1200 sq ft old farmhouse, drafty, but not too bad. We started this heater up the first evening, and ran it through the night. Our house went from sub 60F to 72F by the morning. The entire house! Not just the room where the heater is. It would have gone higher had I set the thermostat higher. WHich I should mention, the thermostat works perfectly and will ramp the unit up and down automatically (if you set it to do so). In fact, as I write this, the unit just shut itself down, and it’s in the low 30s out this morning. I actually considered turning the unit down to like 66F, because it was making me too hot while sleeping and our bedroom is upstairs. This thing really heats up the whole house, I’m absolutley blown away honestly. The install was pretty easy, i bought the Mr. Heter appliance hookup kit on Amazon and it cam with all the proper fittings. Rinnai includes one shutoff valve, and the kit comes with the other one you need. I went to home depot and bought their HomeFlex CSST yellow gas line and the appropriate fittings, basically just the hose and two termination fittings. Drilled a hole in the floor, ran the hose into the basement and out the sill board, then connsected that to a 125lbs propane tank. I have no idea how long the tank will last before I need to refill, but the technician that delivered the tank seems to thinkabout 2 months, we’ll see. It was only $235 to fill the tank, so compared to heating oil at over $5 per gallon and running my furnace with the electric, this is at least 300-400% cheaper per month. LGB! I was thinking about buying another one of these heaters for the other end of my house, but honestly I don’t need it. This unit alone does the job! If I could give 10 stars I would. I gave only 4 stars for install because while it’s easy, I would suggest most people have a pro install it for them because you have to be pretty confident in your ability to leak test the fittings and line properly, or you could die. EDIT - Update 2 years later - The heater is still functioning like new. It still puts out a ton of heat. I clean the filter every month or so. I'm extremely impressed by this unit. It runs through about 100 gal of propane per month, but again, I keep my house at 70-72F throughout the entire winter. The unit basically runs the entire winter, ramping itself up and down automatically as the set temperature is reached. This is still way more cost effective and efficient that my oil burning furnace which I have now not used for the past 3 years. Read more
I don't normally write a lot of reviews, but I wanted to write one about this heater. First off, let me mention that I'm replacing a 32,000 btu ventless freestanding propane fireplace/stove with the small Rinnai. The remote failed on the 12 year old heater and it was expensive to replace everything. I bought the smaller Rinnai and I was a little concerned that it wasn't big enough for my sun porch. Boy, was I wrong. My sun porch is 12w x 16l x 8h with 2 skylights and all double pane windows. Its 28 degrees and the wind is blowing 15mph. The room was 41 degrees when I turned it on. It was 51 degrees in half an hour. There is no doubt that I bought the correct heater. This 10,000 btu heater works better than the 32,000 btu heater it replaced !!! I figure that it's because of the fan blowing the heat across the floor and recirculating instead of going straight to the ceiling. I'm really impressed with this heater and I would recommend it to everyone. I can't believe how much better this thing is compared to the old stove type heater that was 3 times the btu rating. If your thinking about buying one, do it. You wont be disappointed. UPDATE: Going into the third winter season with this propane heater. It still works perfectly. I have a contractor doing some work and he is amazed at how well the heater works and has no smell. Me too. Update: Coming up on the next winter season that will make the heater 5 years old and it's still working perfectly. It keeps my sun room at whatever temperature I want it to be. Update: Fall of 2025 and it still works perfectly like it did when I bought it in 2019. It'll be powered up 24/7 and producing heat when the room calls for it until spring of 2026. No adverse effects and it puts humidity in the air that my oil furnace takes out. I have it plugged into a UPS so it continues to run for hours when the power goes out. Read more
I was looking for an ultra efficient heater. This is not my primary source of heat, so I only use it for a couple of hours a day. I also have a wood burning fireplace(stove) and other parts of the house have radiant heat. On lazy mornings, when I don't feel like lighting the fire, I turn this on and within minutes the living room is warm and cozy. I was concerned about the vent-free safety, but I recall using something like this growing up; we'd turn it on every morning, and never really had a problem. I could not find a vented heater that had a near equivalent efficiency rating. The ultra efficient vented heaters looked like they still need to develop a little. For now, this one meets my needs, looks decent, and was easy to install. It does put out moisture from the propane, which isn't ideal but I haven't noticed much of a difference given I only run it for a couple of hours. I do wish it had a simple timer, but it is well built and a quality product. Read more
Good heater. Weird packaging for shipping it 1000+ miles. Our installer had it up and running un about an hour. We already had a tank and propane for our gas range, but this was around the other side of the house from the tank and needed a whole new line. Works great: puts out a lot of heat for a small unit. My only gripe is WTF Amazon? It came in the original box, but had no protection for the unit at all. There were tiny bits of styrofoam in the box, as if it should have been encased in styrofoam (and likely was at some point). It looked like it had been opened, with all the packing material removed and then re-boxed. It did not look like this happened during shipping. The tape on the box all looked original, actually. And actually the base portion of the box was now assembled correctly (nor as sturdily as it was designed). As I said, Weird. There's a small scrape on the lower front corner. And a small dent in the front middle of the unit. But it seems to run fine. Did I say Weird? Read more
