Berkeys / Berkeys Blog

November 25, 2016

Tankless Water Heaters Installation In Dallas For Homeowners

Tankless water heaters have been gaining popularity in American homes due to their efficiency, their size, and their convenience. Tankless water heaters are small but efficient appliances that have made providing your home with the hot water you need for daily tasks easier, more reliable, and more cost-effective than ever before.

Tankless water heaters mean unlimited hot water. A conventional water heater is limited by the size of its storage tank. When the tank is empty, the hot water stops flowing, and you’ll have to wait for more.

A Tankless Water Heater Installation At Home

Although tankless water heaters are, on average, more efficient than traditional tank-style water heaters, they’re also more expensive — so expensive, in fact, that many potential customers wonder whether their high cost can ever be justified by likely energy savings.

Before you can decide whether to buy a tankless water heater, you’ll need to know how much energy you’ll save. Can you trust the information provided by tankless water heater manufacturers — for example, the estimate from Rinnai’s online calculator that you’ll save $178 per year?

Before I get around to answering that question in detail, suffice it to say: probably not.

Real-world answers from a monitoring study

To figure out the payback period for the incremental cost of a tankless water heater, it would be useful to know:

• The installed cost of a tankless water heater;
• The number of gallons of hot water used per day by the average American family;
• The in-use efficiency of a typical tank-type water heater and the in-use efficiency of a typical tankless water heater;
• The annual natural gas savings and the annual dollar savings attributable to switching from a tank-type to a tankless water heater.

To find the answers to all of these questions, a group of researchers in Minnesota undertook a monitoring study to measure the performance of tank-type and tankless water heaters in actual homes. The researchers concluded that most tankless water heaters will fall apart from old age before they save enough energy to justify their high cost.

The researchers — Dave Bohac, Ben Schoenbauer, and Martha Hewett of the Center for Energy and Environment in Minneapolis, along with Tom Butcher of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Mary Sue Lobenstein of Lobenstein Consulting — monitored water heaters in ten homes for over a year. Their data have been published in a report, “Actual Savings and Performance of Natural Gas Tankless Water Heaters”.

The ten families enrolled in the study were chosen based on household size. The number of people in these families matched the household size distribution shown in the census data for the Minnesota in 2000: two homes had 1 resident each, three homes had 2 residents, two homes had 3 residents, two homes had 4 residents, and one home had 5 residents.

A total of twenty-four water heaters were installed in the ten homes; each home got at least two water heaters. Eight homes got a tank-type water heater (an A.O. Smith GCV40 40-gallon natural gas water heater with atmospheric venting). In addition, each home got at least one natural gas tankless water heater. Ten tankless water heaters were tested; a variety of models were chosen from among those sold by five manufacturers (Bosch, Noritz, Rheem, Rinnai, and Takagi). The researchers did not test any electric tankless models. 

The Benefits Of Tankless Water Heaters

The benefits associated with tankless water heater installation, allowing you to enjoy a more energy- and water-efficient lifestyle while also reducing your monthly utility bills. Call us for your home service and repair needs.