Tankless Water Heater

For space saving and efficiency purposes all homeowners should consider this type of water heater. There are two main options: gas or electric.

To make the best choice you need to consider the following:

1. am I currently running gas or electric now?

2. which system would be easiest to change to given my current system?

3. is my family an agressive hot water user?

4. Would this water heater be able to keep up?

These are all excellent questions that must be answered in order to decide which water heater is right for you. The obvious benefit to a tankless system is space saving. It's designed to produce hot water on demand. Generally the ones installed in homes of high users will need to be gas systems with a high per hour rating although they can also be electric heaters. Every system will have this rating available for how much water it can heat in an hour's time. Use this to do your comparison shopping and to make sure you get the system best for your home.

The reason this system saves you money is because its only needing to heat the water the moments you need it, as opposed to tank systems that must heat, store and maintain the high temperature of water you won't need for several more hours. This translates into cost savings and energy savings for your home. They are also very compact and space saving so the install can be done by one person instead of 2 or 3.

Another feature of these systems is that you can buy very small point of use models designed for either small cabins or small areas of a home (such as a single bathroom, etc) or you can buy whole house models that are centrally located and will cover water use house wide.

Typical limited warranties for tankless water heaters are 2-5 years for the unit, and 7-10 years for the heat exchanger under most circumstances. The expected life of this water heater is 20 years, compared with 10 to 15 years for tank-type systems.

Currently one of the most popular brands of heaters is the Bosch unit (Aquastar model). We have information about some of their models on our Bosch page.