Washington DC Metro | Heating – Plumbing – Electrical – Air Conditioning – Bath Remodeling

Posts Tagged ‘Never Run Out of Hot Water’

It is possible to never run out of hot water again no matter how many people have taken a shower before you. This was just a dream not too far in the past. Those with large families dreaded the long line of washing and taking a shower due to the limited amount of hot water the tanks would hold.

On average, a hot water heater tank would hold 40 gallons of hot water ready for use. As the hot water is being used, additional cold water is being released into the tank so its level is maintained. This reduces the amount of accessible hot water to approximately 20 gallons before there is a significant temperature decrease.

A byproduct of readily accessible hot water from traditional water heaters is the fact that the heated water can have more suspended solids because of the elevated temperature. These solids are salts that when left in the pipes precipitate out and collect on the walls of the pipes in the system. Over time, the buildup of these precipitated solids will reduce the water flow from the pipes.

With tankless hot water systems, both of those disadvantages are eliminated. Hot water is produced upon demand for any length of time that it is called to do so. The amount of dissolved solids is also reduced since there is not a chance for them to build up like in the old style water tank before the water flows through the pipes.

Most tankless hot water systems are slightly more expensive than the traditional hot water heaters. On the other hand, there is an 80% reduction in the energy that is needed to produce the accessible hot water. The savings you will incur on your energy bill, along with the fact that you will never run out of hot water, makes it the most popular choice for hot water systems being installed in most homes today.

Another benefit of the tankless system is that energy is not being used just to keep a tank of water at a set temperature.  The old style heating would cycle on and off as the stored water cooled off whether you were using it or not.  This new method uses energy only as the hot water is being used.

Check out the John C. Flood, Inc. brands available; Renai, Takagi, Bosch and Noritz

Read our previous post on tankless water heating

For many years the choice you had for water heaters was to decide on how large of a holding tank you would need.  Now you have another choice and when you select this method of water heating you will save money and qualify for a federal tax credit.

Plumbing and heating technology have advanced and we now have Tankless Water Heaters.  No more will you be heating a large volume of water each time the heating cycle kicks in.

When you think of it with the old style of hot water tank, you would be heating up a large reserve that would be available for the next time a batch of hot water was needed for a bath or laundry.

That large tank of water would sit there all day and slowly it would cool off.  When it got down to the point that the thermostat would kick in it would heat the tank back up to your high temp setting and then the cycle would start all over again.

So why use energy to heat up water that you do not use?  A tankless heater is so efficient it only uses power or fuel on demand.  When you turn on a hot water faucet the heating method kicks right in so fast that you have a nice supply of perfect temperature water for as long as you need it.

Shut off the faucet and the heater shuts off.  No longer are you paying the natural gas company or the power company to heat up a big tank of hot water to only have it sit there and cool off and heat up again.

It just makes perfect sense to use only the energy you need, and not to be wasteful.  The brands of tankless systems that the John C. Flood, Inc. company carry are; Renai, Takagi, Bosch and Noritz.  Contact a Flood team member now to see how you can get $200 off from one of these new installations until December 31, 2009.  Ask them about how to apply for the tax credit also.

Update: Read our latest post about tankless water heating and here: tankless hot water heating