There are a lot of misconceptions regarding tank type water heaters and tankless systems. As a homeowner, if you’re thinking of adding a tankless to your home take what you read on the internet with a grain of salt. Everyone seems to be some sort of expert on water heaters and can tell you which system is better when in reality you yourself needs to make the decision. A tankless has been installed tens of thousands of homes throughout the greater Toronto area with positive reviews.
In some situations as tankless is not the right choice, you need to trust your water heater installer to shoot you straight. The hard part is finding reputable tankless installers that are willing to tell you the whole truth and not just force the sale through. I can tell you without hesitation that we and all employees put the homeowners interest first. Operating on this simple principle ensures that the homeowner remains a customer and we remain in business. Simple as that.
Now back to the tankless misconceptions published throughout the internet. A recent article regarding the pros and cons was published on thesop.org by a writing that appears to have just taken some common thoughts regarding the system and published them as if completely true.
Below is our response to the author regarding his article.
Hello John,
I read your article on thesop.org and wanted to correct you on a few things regarding tank vs tankless water heaters.
You said – Tankless water heaters are about 10 to 20% more energy efficient than traditional tank water heaters.
Tankless range from 82% to 98% efficiency, an expensive conventional tank brand new is lucky to be 60% so 20-30 percent is more accurate.
You said – Tankless water heaters work best when only one water tap is using hot water.
That’s not accurate at all, a tankless can easily run 3 showers and a dishwasher simultaneously (or some similar combination).
You said – If water taps are far apart from each other, it is recommended to buy another tankless water heater.
How does that even make sense? A tankless is designed to produce enough hot water for your whole home and is usually installed very close to where the old tank was installed, thus the hot water has the exact same distance to travel.
You said – Water does not instantly heat up when using a tankless water heater, but does with a tank heater.
This is backwards, it does heat up instantly, tankless are sometimes referred to as insta-hot water heaters.
You said – Tankless water heaters require yearly maintenance in order to remain efficient.
This is correct but not a bad thing as you stated… any and all water heaters see a 2% reduction in efficiency every year due to scale and lime build up. A tankless is designed to have the scale removed or flushed out of the system so that it maintains its very high efficiency rating. A conventional tank has no flush or maintenance thus the scale builds up year after year. Think of the efficiency these two water heating systems are operating at 10 years down the road.
You’re a university student, I know you can do better than this. Let me know if you’re interested in re-writing, correcting, or doing another article on the subject. I would be more than happy to answer any questions or provide any help needed to accurately portray the pros and cons of tankless systems.
