PROS and CONS of Going From a TANK to TANKLESS Water Heater

pros and cons from going from a tank water heater to a tankless water heater now these are things that you really need to know as a homeowner i have a plumbing company and it was not a smart idea for me to change to a tankless in my house so i'm going to explain some things to you about it but i'm also going to tell you the pros of them and the cons of them let's talk about them right now if you know anybody that's thinking about changing over to tankless water heater you might share this video with them because i'm going to give you some tips and tricks to let them know right off the bat if this might be a good idea or not tankless water heater benefits let's start with them this is a tankless water heater there's some really good benefits to it number one do you see how small this is compared to a tank water heater the tank water heater is about five feet tall 24 inches in diameter and takes up an entire closet you could remove that install this in the closet and think about the extra room that you've got now that's a great thing one of the other things too is endless hot water literally a tankless water heater is designed to just continuously run as long as there's water flow so as long as you're in the shower it's just going to keep making that hot water as you go the good thing about that is you've got unlimited hot water the bad thing about it your children have unlimited hot water too and they may stay in the shower forever now this is a benefit to tankless water heaters and really one of the biggest ones is your gas savings think about it it only fires up when you're calling for hot water so if you've got a washing machine running with hot water you're taking a hot shower you're washing your hands you're washing dishes whatever you're doing with hot water this water heater fires up and it does it in a very unique way literally your gas comes in here when the switch kicks on and tells it it's calling for hot water your burner assembly fires up and then water goes through your heat exchanger so it is super powered heat right here where it needs to be and the way that it heats up water to a higher temperature is slow the flow until it gets to that temperature then as soon as you turn the water off and there is no flow the burner stops now the fan keeps going to evaporate all the fumes but there is no more gas burning how's that help you think about your tank water heater at home your tank water heater that water stays hot all day long but we'll talk about that more later so those are some of the benefits of this the unlimited hot water the savings on gas that's not a bad deal and another big one the extra space you're gonna save this is now a closet that you could possibly use for something stay little in and i'm gonna tell you what made it where i could not install the tankless water here at my house and make it make sense tank water heater benefits let's talk about them now the benefits are you're not going to have to change anything if you've got a tank type water heater tank top water heater and you take it out literally you're going to put it right back in now it may be a little bit bigger you may have to check your door facing different things like that but it's a pretty simple exchange you're taking the old one out you're putting the new one in where that is a benefit is there's not a lot of extra work involved they both have 30 40 000 btus you don't have to change your gas you normally don't have to change your vent really you don't have to change much maybe just code upgrades and that's about it so the btus are your british thermal units that is how much gas it takes to heat the water now a tank top water heater takes about 40 000 btus these take about 200 000 btus another benefit to a tank you already know how long it takes how many showers can you get out of it if you can take two or three before you gotta wait you don't want five people climbing in the shower one after the other you may run out of water if you're already used to that you're already conditioned to how long you have to wait in between things you're also conditioned as to what else you can't do can you wash a load of clothes and run the dishwasher and take three or four showers maybe not but you already know that based on the system that you already have but you also know with the tank if you change out to a tank you're going to get higher efficiency and hopefully quite a bit more hot water out of it now let's talk tankless water heater cons here's the problem with them as you see this is not like a tank type water heater now one thing that i do like about the bradford white brand is the water connections are on top most tankless water heaters are on bottom so you're actually going to have to redo the piping say that we had two lines coming out of here for a typical tank top water heater we're going to have to reroute those lines down to the bottom also the gas line may not be sufficient most tank top water heaters can run off of a half inch gas line most of these take a quarter possibly a one inch line or a higher pressure line so you're going to have to modify your gas line either by increasing the size of your meter increasing the size of the lines or increasing the pressure and putting regulators on other things so that can be quite costly now the other thing is your vents look here we've got pvc vents on this now they used to have a stainless steel vent which most of them have gotten away from but this pvc has to go somewhere and your old type b water heater vent is not going to work in a situation like that so there's definitely things that are going to have to change and if you have a condensing unit now this tankless water heater has a drain off of it that you also have to take into consideration and say you're going electric not gas they take quite a bit of electricity you're gonna have to run new power lines to your water heater and maybe even upgrade your panel to handle the additional power and remember a tankless you've got to flush at least once a year and you're supposed to only put conditioned water in it meaning a water softener a water filtration system what are you going to do if you get a tankless how are you going to treat that because it can mess up your warranty again another thing i love about the bradford wyatt they've got actually flush valves built in so that you can plug into it and flush it and not have to add anything other tankless water heaters have an assembly where it's a valve and a bypass where you can shut off the water to the house flush everything inside and wash it out you want to keep that heat exchanger inside as clean as possible the line inside is about half inch three quarter inch imagine what just a little build up could do on your flow you're supposed to flush your tank water heater too most people don't but if you don't these it can really mess you up and cost you a lot of money now your tank water heater cons how many times have you been in the shower and you start running out of hot water that's something that happens that you don't have a problem with when you go tankless and as your kids get older so you've got three young kids right now say they're in elementary school well whenever they get to middle school in high school they're going to start taking more showers they're going to start spending more time in the bathroom they're going to start spending more time in the showers so are you going to have enough hot water for that that is really a problem with a tank top water heater and think about the closet you're in it's hard to just upgrade to a bigger water heater you can go from a 40 to a 50 and that's going to give you a little bit but to go bigger than a 50 you may need a bigger closet so you definitely need to look at it and think about what are your options here and on the tank top water heater think about it that water is hot all day long if i go out of town for the weekend my burner is firing all weekend long to keep that water at the temperature that i've got it set at it can be very costly just to keep that water hot all day every day a tankless water heater it doesn't happen it only fires up when somebody calls for hot water so here's the big thing this is why i did not go tankless on my house now my water heater is installed out in the garage and actually in a little cove but for me to go tankless i had to take that out melt the tankless on the wall but then my vent pipe goes up through the second floor now i've got the type b vent problem is i can't put my pvc in it so what i would have had to do is open up a chase upstairs to remove the old type b vent install new pvc vent and my gas line i would have had to increase the size of that now this is not anything that i really wanted to do and the other thing the third thing i would have had to install an electrical outlet yes even the gas water heater has an electrical outlet because you have to run the fans this is something that i did not have on my regular atmospheric vent tank top water heater now there's benefits to it you're going to save money in the long run going tankless water heaters but if your roi is so much that you can't afford it is it really worth it i've had one customer that it cost me almost ten thousand dollars for them to convert over to tankless but they knew it's exactly what they wanted to do so going from tank to tankless is it really worth it well that's a question really only you can ask yourself i love the idea of going tankless because i love the unlimited hot water i don't have to worry about the gas running all day to keep the water hot so do me a favor if you're a homeowner or a plumber and you believe in tankless you believe there's a great reason for it leave me a comment down below and let me know if you don't or if you've installed these and had problems maybe the plumber didn't do a gas load calculation chart and you don't have enough gas or it makes something else go out do me a favor and leave me a message down below and let me know what you think either way it's a decision we all get to make when it's time to change out of water here i'm roger wakefield elite ap the expert plumber i'll see you in the next video if you don't get flushed

Channel: Roger Wakefield Plumbing Education

Views: 444,963

Keywords: PROS and CONS of Going From a TANK to TANKLESS Water Heater, tank vs tankless water heater, tank versus tankless water heater, tank or tankless water heater, which is better tank water heater or tankless, tankless vs tank water heater, tankless vs tank water heater pros and cons, tankless vs regular water heater, tankless water heater, water heater, water heater vs tankless, water heater vs tankless system, tank vs tankless, tankless water heaters vs regular water heaters, roger

Id: 8FVT7UHph9w

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022