The LAST big upgrade

[Delphinus]

Just so you feel better, you'll be happier with the 50g. At my old house I replaced a 15 year old but leaking hot water tank, and went with a 40g since that seemed to be the most common size. Turns out the old one was a 50g, and while I thought that "newer will be better anyhow, since the old one will be all encrusted and stuff inside, it's not really 50g any more" .. and it turns out that whatever working volume it DID have, it was still more than 40g and it turns out that 40g was just slightly under whatever volume the bathtubs were (ie., the water turned ice cold before done filling). It sucked. So my own word of advice for when replacing hot water tanks is go bigger than what you think you need. At the time they had just started introducing the "on demand" style heaters (ie. without a tank) but man the price difference was huge, like 3 or 4 times as expensive. Which was too bad, they do sound sort of neat.