Tankless water heaters are one of the most popular upgrades you can make to your home. The benefits of making the switch are enormous, the investment is reasonable, and the impact on your life is tremendous. There are plenty of reasons why people are making this switch so frequently, but there are a few reasons which stand out as some of the most popular among all the rest. In this blog, we’ll explore these top reasons why people make the switch to a tankless water heater system and hopefully help you see how you could benefit from one as well!
A traditional tank-style water heater typically lasts around eight to ten years before needing replacement. Even with proper maintenance and care, these systems have a pretty substantial flaw: their constant exposure to water, regular heating and cooling cycles, and the corrosive nature of water itself means that the tank itself will eventually be eaten away. That’s when you start getting leaks and need a water heater replacement urgently.
However, tankless water heaters don’t usually have to worry about that problem. While they do require regular maintenance to keep working as well as they could, these systems don’t suffer from the same constant wear and tear from water that tank-style heaters face. This means they last substantially longer, and that their repairs are generally much easier than those for a tank-style heater. As a result, a tankless water heater may be the last brand-new water heater you ever have to buy for your home—in some cases, these systems can have their lifespan extended nearly indefinitely.
This is easily one of the top two most popular reasons why people make the switch to a tankless water heater. Tank-style heaters have always had one huge problem to contend with—they have a finite capacity, and if you drain that entire capacity, they have hot water left to give. When they run out, the only thing that can travel through your hot water lines is unheated water, which is when you get the unpleasantness of a cold shower or a washing cycle that doesn’t have a “hot” option.
However, with a tankless water heater, this issue is a thing of the past. These heaters are also known as “on-demand” heaters because they produce hot water as you need it rather than producing a set amount ahead of time and then pumping it into your home. This means they produce a potentially infinite amount of hot water so long as your utility connections remain active, and thus you’ll never have to stress about a cold shower or bad wash cycle ever again.
Tank water heaters have a number of other problems beyond just running out of hot water or dealing with pesky leaks. They also carry a number of other potential issues which could make them a pain to deal with. On one hand, these systems take up a ton of space. You probably know right where your heater is in your garage or in a closet somewhere in your home—it’s hard to miss. However, with a tankless water heater, you could easily make better use of this space, as they take up only a small fraction of the volume a tank used to.
Likewise, because tanks of water are constantly expanding and contracting with heating and refilling cycles, the materials in them eventually wear out. There’s also an issue of pressure building up inside your tank. While pressure relief valves are designed to prevent this pressure from becoming dangerous, they too can wear out and eventually lead (in extremely rare cases) to a tank exploding! Tankless water heaters don’t have this danger risk, making them significantly safer for your home.
Because tankless water heaters only pay to heat the water in your pipes once, they’re significantly cheaper to run. Think of it this way: you don’t shut off your water heater as you head off to work and your kids head out to the school for the day. Instead, your heater just sits there idly, keeping your water at the desired temperature until you get home. This may involve several heating cycles, as even the best insulation isn’t able to keep all of the heat in your water heater tank. All the while, the energy from that heat cycle slowly trickles away and is essentially wasted by the time the next heat cycle starts.
With a tankless water heater, you don’t have to worry about wasting energy in these cycles. Your water heater will simply heat the water you need on-demand, which means you’ll only need to pay for the energy to keep it warm one time. That means less energy consumption and a savings on your monthly utility bills.
Piggybacking off the previous point, all of these benefits point to one big reason why people make the switch to tankless: because it saves them money. In fact, it’s quite possible that this upgrade pays for itself for the average homeowner by the time you’d have to replace your tank water heater once again (so within about eight to ten years). With the savings on your utility bills, reduced chances of annoying breakdowns, and a significantly longer lifespan, these systems are way less expensive to operate, and that’s great news for your wallet.
To learn more about installing a tankless water heater in your home, call the experts at John Owens Services, Inc. at today!
Our philosophy is simple, we always want to maintain equipment to give it the longest life possible. Next, we want to focus on repairing when something goes wrong. Then only as the last choice, we replace equipment when needed. That’s the John Owens Way.