Myth Busting! Tank -vs- Tankless Water Heaters

hey welcome to the anishop today we are going to talk about tank versus tankless you know after two decades in this industry I can tell you I have heard just about every myth there is to say about tankless water heaters and that's the topic of this today's video I've got a list of eight myths that are being told about tankless it's sponsored by Renee let's do this [Music] tankless won't work as well with hard water or scale now I don't know how to approach this one I got it a few days ago on a job I tore out an old tank water heater and installed a tankless but I took that old tank with me back to the shop so camera guy Chris and I could cut a hole inside of it and take a look inside see what was in there I gotta tell you this water heater was installed about 15 years ago it's got a whole bunch of sediment inside some scale some mineral deposits and rust now the well water feeding it wasn't treated and so the inside of all the plumbing fixtures and all the piping are going to look similar to the inside of this tank Pretty Dirty this isn't a tank water heater problem though it also wouldn't be a tankless water heater problem it's actually a water quality problem and so you have to treat the water before you expect your plumbing to last any length of time especially a water heater so it's an investment you're going to put in your home or into your business treat the water going into it it'll last a lot longer tankless does not do well with cold ground water temperatures now that just isn't true so here in Minnesota we have 40 degree water coming out of our well into our house we typically set a water heater like this at 120 degrees for our customers now if you do the math that's an 80 degree temperature swing and this unit right here will give me up to five gallons per minute under those parameters so I know what you're going to ask me next how many showers can I take at one time or how many fixtures can I run all at once through a tankless well the math is pretty simple a typical shower uses two to two and a half gallons per minute a kitchen faucet one and a half to two so if you start doing math like how many showers can I take think about the temperature we set these at 120 degrees most people do not shower with full 100 120 degree water we actually mix it down with cold water so we're using roughly 85 percent or so of the capacity so really of the capacity of the shower actually in hot water so really we're talking like 1.5 to 1.7 gallons per minute of hot water through that shower that's not near its full capacity that math works out to be roughly three showers at one time using this unit under those parameters if you live somewhere warmer you can actually get more hot water out of a unit like this but that whole myth about it not working well with cold water just isn't true I've proven it my family's proven it I've got them in my own house I could go on and on but the math doesn't lie that is a total mess tankless is expensive to purchase and install as compared to a tank water heater well let's face it over the last few years we've seen prices of building materials Skyrocket inflation pandemic you name it about five or six years ago we saw the government Implement a plan that mandated the Energy Efficiency be increased for tank water heaters well this actually increased the cost of a tank water heater as expected and so now we're dealing with situations that are common where tank water heater is actually more expensive than a tankless now a professional plumber should be able to install a tankless water heater and not much more time than it takes to install a tank admittedly it could take a little bit longer but in most cases they've become so common and they've become so easy to install with the new technology and the way they're packaging these units that I would say it is not more expensive to purchase or install a tankless water heater venting for tankless water heaters is too expensive now let's talk about that for a second I've got two different models on the wall right here a condensing unit and a non-condensing unit now this model here you can see that big pipe on the outside or up at the top there it's actually a pipe within a pipe it's a direct vent appliance using a concentric vent system so it kind of looks like it's proprietary but actually it's really common in this industry the inside pipe is aluminum that's where the flue gases go the outside pipe is plastic the combination the system itself isn't expensive now this model the condensing water heater actually has PVC attached to it for its venting you might be able to use indoor air for the combustion which would save money and time because you're not running a second pipe to the outside but even if you did PVC is one of the most common pipes in America for Plumbing Systems so PVC venting not expensive overall I would say just looking at these two examples that tankless venting is not too expensive it takes too long for hot water to get to my sink using a tankless well I'm not exactly sure where this came from because in my estimation it doesn't take long at all if you're using the right unit but in any case no matter whether you're using a tank or a tankless the water is heated usually in a remote location like a mechanical room and maybe you're talking about a faucet all the way across the house it would take a little while for that water that's already in that pipe to clear out with hot water but it doesn't matter how you're heating it actually Renee offers many units that have recirculating pumps inside of them and these units can actually keep that line hot at all times for you it saves a ton of water and it saves a ton of energy so look into that if you're waiting a long time for water to get to your faucet stainless steel heat exchangers are better than copper heat exchangers well let's dispel this myth right now this is a condensing water heater by renai it is actually made out of stainless steel but that's because the condensation that forms from the cooling flue gases inside of this unit are actually pretty acidic that water that drains out of the bottom of it would eat through copper pretty quickly that doesn't mean that copper is a poor material for a heat exchanger it just means that stainless steel is better for condensing appliances now a lot of Manufacturers only use stainless steel that can be problematic not only is it harder to manufacture with it's actually more expensive let's take a look at this non-condensing water heater by Renee now if you look right here that's actually a copper heat exchanger we've been using copper and plumbing for decades because of its strength and durability now it's also really great at transferring energy super fast so using a copper heat exchanger like this one in a tankless water heater makes a ton of sense renai uses both stainless and copper but they use it where it makes the most sense for them and I gotta say makes sense to me stainless steel heat exchangers are better than copper Heat exchangers that myth is busted low gas pressure makes installing tankless unaffordable so let's get into this for a second we're not uses this inducer motor it's kind of like an exhaust fan or like a turbo on an engine okay so this fan actually works with this electronic gas valve to bring gas in through the bottom where it's connected through this pipe right and it's just like supercharging it to the burner that's right here now the combination of this technology is actually lowered the cost of installing a tankless compared to years past so you've probably heard in the past that whenever you replace a tank water heater you have to upgrade the gas line that's not always true I think it's a total myth tankless is a new technology and is not proven well I could prove this one wrong so I've had tankless in my house for over 10 years and my family never has taken a cold shower Also let's go back in time a little bit about 100 years when I started making appliances and in the 60s they started making tankless water heaters installing them all over Japan hundreds of thousands of them in the 1990s they started importing tankless into North America now I've been installing them since the early 2000s I don't have any customers complaining I couldn't afford to I wouldn't be in business if tankless wasn't a proven technology I've literally installed hundreds of them so the notion that tankless is a new technology and isn't proven that's a total lie you know over the last two decades I've installed literally dozens and dozens of tankless water heaters and when I sit down with a client to talk about either converting two tankless from a tank or if we're doing new construction we're going to install a tankless from the start the conversation usually revolves around three main subjects endless hot water space and efficiency so let's start with efficiency a tankless water heater like this is upwards of 95 efficient a standard tank water heater is down in the 60 tile efficiency ratings that doesn't even compare in my opinion now space so a 50 gallon tank water heater is about 24 plus inches in diameter depending on how tall it is that's two feet of space on my floor in a very compact mechanical room or closet let's say for example so if you're looking to gain a little bit of space we can take it up off the floor and put it on the wall freeing up some space below it for storage Maybe then if and then endless hot water now I've raised two kids along with my wife Heather and I tell you what when they hit the teenage years they stay in that shower for what seems like an eternity we never run out of hot water because when you turn a hot water faucet on in your house your tankless water heater turns on immediately it won't stop until you turn it off so endless hot water literally it won't time out it won't stop making hot water now those three things are pretty important to my customers if they weren't we wouldn't be talking about it nearly every single time we're talking about putting in tankless you know I hope you were able to learn something from this video if I've left something out please let me know in the comments if you haven't already subscribed to my channel I'd appreciate it if you did we put out video content all the time check us out over on mechanicalhub.com or any one of our social channels so from the Ani shop I hope to see you next time maybe it'll be a job site see you later foreign [Music]

Channel: Mechanical Hub

Views: 1,847,927

Keywords: plumbing, tankless water heater, water heater, water heater install, tankless heater, instant hot water, instant water heater, rinnai, navien, tank, water heat, how to install a tankless

Id: ZSDNnJmsl78

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2022