How is My New Tankless Water Heater Different From My Old Tank Water Heater?

You have made a wise choice by purchasing a tankless water heater. Your old tank water heater was probably located far away from where you use hot water, and you had to run the hot water for quite a while before any hot water came out the faucet. That was wasted water, just poured down the drain.

Your tankless water heater are designed to heat only the water you use, and may be a whole house unit or one designed to be located right where you need hot water.

Old Tank Type Water Heaters

Most homes use either a gas or electric tank water heater holding between 30 to 60 gallons of water. Even with good insulation around the tank, the water begins to cool, even if you haven’t used any hot water, and the gas burner or electric element will turn on to reheat that unused water, just because it got cool. When all the cool water is back up to the proper temperature, the heater or element will turn off until needed again, in an hour or so. This goes on all day and night, even when you are on a two-week vacation.

As you can see, you not only waste the water going down the drain while waiting for the hot water to arrive at your faucet, you have wasted all the energy to heat and reheat the water between your uses.

Your New Tankless Water Heater

A point of use tankless water heater is located right where the hot water is needed, in the bath, kitchen, or laundry. The tankless unit is usually electric power, but outside units may be powered by natural gas. When looking at tankless water heaters it important to include all the faucets that will be using the heater so it may be sized properly.

Even though your faucet or showerhead flows about two gallons of water a minute, the tankless unit does not need to heat two gallons right away. It only needs to heat a few seconds of water flow to begin, and then, be able to heat two gallons every minute after that. When you quit using hot water, the unit shuts off, and when off, no power is used.

When choosing a tankless water heater in Knoxville or just a tank type water heater in Knoxville, and looking for a Knoxville Plumber, we would encourage you to give us a call today!