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Carolina Energy Conservation
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Dr. Energy Saver is replacing a leaky, gas-fired water heater with an energy efficient tankless water heater.
The homeowner in this house had a gas-fired water heater that let go. It just leaked all over the floor and we replaced it with a high efficiency tankless water heater. Let's take a look.
Tank style water heater is inefficient for a number of reasons first of all you only have a finite amount of water that is heated and if you are using a lot of hot water people are taking showers so all at the same time then you are going to deplete that and you are going to run out of hot water.
We can also see that we have PVC intake and PVC exhaust and these pipes go directly to the outside instead of taking air for combustion from inside the basement or inside your home and running it up a chimney it takes that combustion air from outside so we don't create any vacuum inside the building that has to be made up by outside air leaking in because we have dedicated combustion air coming in.
We have very little heat going out of the exhaust. We are getting those BTU's into the water into our house and less outside but we can run the exhaust gases through a PVC vent because the exhaust gases are cool because we rung all the heat out of them.
Read Full Transcript:
What makes a tankless water heater so much more efficient than a conventional tank water heater? Larry Janesky, president of Dr. Energy Saver, was recently On the Job in Florida, answering that very question. A tank based water heater loses heat in many ways. First there is what we call the "standby heat loss". The water in the tank, when not in use, cools down and when it gets too cold, the unit has to re-heat the water so that you always have hot water when you need it. This process is repeated over and over again, 24/7, 365 days a year, whether you are asleep or awake, at home or on vacation. To prevent some energy loss, this homeowner wrapped the tank as an attempt to insulated it, and installed a timer that would turn the water heater off while the house was empty, and turn it back on close to the time when the family came back home. In this case, the tank cover wasn't providing proper insulation. A lot of heat was being lost through the top of the unit and through the uninsulated pipes. The timer caused the water to cool down completely and then make the unit work at full blast at the end of the day, to reheat all that water in the tank. Tankless water heaters, as the name suggests, do not have a tank. They heat water on demand, as much as you need and when you need. Unlike tank units that run out of hot water, tankless units provide an endless flow of water, shower after shower. High efficiency units also modulate. They operate at full blast when the hot water demand is bigger, and at lower settings when you only need a little bit of water to wash a dish or your hands. There is virtually no waste in newer models, operating at 90% of efficiency. That means that 90% of the energy you pay for to run the heater is actually converted into hot water. Tank based water heaters, specifically older models, operate at an efficiency at or less than 65%. Are you shopping for a new water heater? Let Dr. Energy Saver show you many more ways to save energy and money in water heating, HVAC, lighting, and many areas of your house while improving your family's comfort!
