Tankless water heaters – advantages and disadvantages

 

 

A growing number of homeowners now prefer to install tankless or demand type water heaters for the simple reason that they are more energy efficient. As hot water is not stored in these water heaters there is no stand by energy loss you can save regularly on your monthly electric bills. A thankless water heater might be just the right choice for your home but there are also a few factors you need to consider before buying them to make sure that you are purchasing the right model. Factors you should consider for purchasing this particular type of water heaters are

·         Size

·         Availability and fuel type

·         Energy factor or energy efficiency

·         Cost of the model and installation

How they work

Tankless heaters those use a storage tank to heat the water, instead when flows to particular unit through the pipes an electrical or gas powered heating element heats the water. That is the reason there is a constant flow of hot water and there is no need to wait for the water getting hot. Around 2 to 5 gallons of water per minute can be provided by a tankless type heater though the flow rate considerably limits the output.

Advantages

Some of the major advantages of thankless water heater installation Maroubra are as follows –

·         Space savers. Being tankless they require much smaller space for installation and can be easily mounted on a wall. Also it has smaller number of pipes that makes connecting with other plumbing fixtures a lot easier.

·         Energy efficient: A tankless water heater can be up to 30% more energy efficient than a conventional water heating system with storage tanks. In order to keep water hot inside the tanks, tank heaters consume a lot more energy. But tankless heating system provide hot water on demand, that means only the amount of water to be used will be heated and no energy is wasted.

·         Longer life expectancy: The new energy efficient models those are now available in the market have life expectancy period of around 20 years. So if the existing tank heater is old and giving problem, replacing it with a tankless heater is an excellent choice.

·         Safety: safety is another factor that makes tankless heaters a better choice. As they only supply hot water on demand – they operate when required only. On the other hand traditional were required to be kept on almost permanently.

Disadvantages

Always make sure that you hire a professionally trained and licensed Plumber Maroubra for installation and maintenance of this. Like everything else tankless heaters also come with certain disadvantages or problems that you might face like

·         High upfront cost: Compared to tank type heaters a tankless heater can cost you almost double. Affordability is a major factor with these heaters.

·         High installation cost: They require good quality pipes and good venting too – both of which can be pretty costly.

·         Hard water: If there is hard water, homeowners are required to add a water softener in order to protect it and that will also cost some money.