Sunday, August 5, 2007

How Does A Tankless Water Heater Work?

Consider this scenario: You come home after a hard day’s work, and the only thing on your mind is taking a nice, long, hot shower. You hop in, and start to enjoy the hot water splashing down upon you. However, just a few minutes into your escape from the day, you notice the water temperature turning lukewarm. Another minute later, it is bordering on chilly. Before you know it, your nice hot shower has turned into a freezing torture test. How can this happen? Well, more than likely the problem can be traced to an underachieving storage tank water heater. For this reason (and others), more and more people are starting to discover the benefits of switching over to a tankless water heater. How does a tankless water heater work? In this article, we’ll give you the skinny on this amazing system.

Before we examine the tankless water heater, let’s take a closer look at its counterpart. A storage tank water heater keeps a certain level of water hot 24 hours a day, which can lead to some negative results. First, this constant energy use leads to higher electricity bills and unnecessary wear on the water tank. In addition, when the hot water supply gets used (as in the example above), the water tank needs a standard amount of time (also known as recovery time) to heat the water back up again. This can often be frustrating, especially in larger family homes where the battle for hot water can be “heated”.

That leads us to tankless water heaters. These systems are designed to heat water as you need it, which means that everyone in your family will be able to use hot water anytime on demand. How is this possible? Well, whenever somebody turns on the hot water faucet, the tankless water heater springs into action. Cold water flows into the heater and is instantly heated by copper and brass water ways known as exchangers. The result is endless hot water in a matter of seconds! The hot water temperature is set by you and will always remain the same, which should eliminate any incidences of burns or scalding water. When the members of your family are finished using the hot water, the tankless water heater will shut down until it is needed again. As you can see, this system is far more efficient than standard storage tank water heaters.

Tankless water heaters also last longer than storage tank water heaters. Aside from being more space effective (most units are a quarter of the size of conventional heaters), tankless water heaters also provide unobstructed heat transfer. Why is this? Because water is not actually stored in a tankless heater, mineral build-up does not occur. This enables a tankless water heater to perform at the highest level for upwards of 20 years or more.

Now that you have a better idea about how a tankless water heater works, why not consider replacing your outdated storage tank with a system of your own? You will save energy, space, and money, and best of all you and your family will always be guaranteed hot water any time it is needed.

Consider this scenario: You come home after a hard day’s work, and the only thing on your mind is taking a nice, long, hot shower. You hop in, and start to enjoy the hot water splashing down upon you. However, just a few minutes into your escape from the day, you notice the water temperature turning lukewarm. Another minute later, it is bordering on chilly. Before you know it, your nice hot shower has turned into a freezing torture test. How can this happen? Well, more than l...