Is Going Tankless Worth It
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Is Using a Tankless Water Heater Worth It?
If you are renovating the house or building your new house, you might be thinking if it is worth it so use a tankless water heater over the traditional water heater. The reason probably is that you want to save a floor space. Or you might want to know if it would just be better to have storage water heater, after all since you have many members in the family who would be using hot water.
Each water heater has their advantage over the other and has their own disadvantages. But when is it the right decision to use tankless water heater? And would the cost and decision worth it?
First, it would be better to know if there would be gas service in your location. Using a gas tankless water heater is better than using electric since it has a wide application compared to electric. Gas heaters can heat hot water quicker than electric heaters. However, if everything else in your house is electric, using gas may not be the best choice.
You should also think about the family lifestyle. If you have 4 kids in their teens and 2 busy adults in the family, it might be better to go with tank water heater since you would rather need a lot of energy heating water using the tankless type and it may not meet your demands if you have mutiple showers going on and appliances using hot water at the same time. But if you are only two in the household and you are able to manage the use of other appliances and shower in the house, then you might want to go with tankless water heaters.
Also, if you are living in a cold place that should also need to be taken into consideration. This would mean that if you will be using a tankless heater, it would require a great deal of energy to rise the temperature of the water.
Let’s check on the cost analysis.
Compared to tank water heaters, tankless water heaters are more expensive. You would need to lay down a big investment for tankless water heaters. But you should also need to take note that you will be able to recover this cost with the energy saving in using the tankless heater.
Usually, tankless heaters are twice expensive compared to tank water heaters. Their prices range from $200 for a electric heater which is small to $1000 for a large gas tankless heater. The cost varies with respect to its water capacity or the flow rate in relation to the rise of temperature.
This price can usually deter homeowners with the decision to go with tankless. But check on the energy savings over the life span of the heater. The usual life span of tankless heaters is at least 20 years. That is typically 5 times longer than the life span of tank heaters.
Another thing, some tests show that an average household consumes $214 per year for gas tank heaters to heat a 77 degree 64.3 gallons of water. But should a gas tankless heater would be used, they would only spend $150 per year. And for electric tankless water heater, they would consume $438 per year as opposed to $488 for electric tank water heater. So looking at these figures, tankless tank should really save you a great deal of money. Those are just figures and you should calculate your own situation.
For example, if you are a single person living in the south, lets say you shower 15 mintues a day everyday. That would be 91.25 hours of hot water. A small electric tankless uses about 12 kW at max power which would be 1095 kWh for the year for showers. At 7.5 cents per kWh, that is $6.84 per month for all your showers.
But you should also look into if these amounts will definitely be recovered over the life span of the heater. You should also need to check on your usage, since if one tankless heater would not be able to match the simultaneous use of hot water within the household, then you will need to go over the computation again. You might end up buying more than one tankless heater and would find yourself computing every now and then on when will you recover the cost as compared to the savings per month for the energy.
Deciding if using the tankless water heater depends largely on a lot of factors such as the family requirement for hot water, the budget, the size, which fuel should use for heating water and the savings. But even if some figures were given as a guide, the decision would still be up to you if definitely a tankless heater will all be worth it.
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