Water Heater Houston | Plumber Houston
Water Heaters Come in Two Flavors in Houston TX: Conventional Storage Water Heaters and On Demand, Instantaneous or Tankless Water Heaters
Conventional storage water heaters are by far the most popular type of water heating equipment for Houston homes. You can depend on the Houston Plumber professionals to help you navigate through all the choices you have: Is tankless the way to go or should you install another regular (tank) water heater?
How Regular Water Heaters in Houston Work
Houston Texas single-family homes typically have a storage water heater that has a reservoir of 20 to 80 gallons of hot water that is ready to use. They release the heated water from the top of the tank when you turn on your shower or run the dishwasher.
Cold water then enters at the bottom of the tank through a dip tube, ensuring that the tank is always full. If the water has time to mix, you will get far less than the rated amount of hot water. Also, if the heater is at the far end of the house, the water entering your garden tub will be cooler than the water leaving the tank.
Houston Homeowners Can Improve Your Water Heaters Efficiency
Run down to Lowe's or Home Depot and purchase a low cost water heater blanket. Insulate your water heater with at least R-6 insulation. Read manufacturer's warranty to you don't void it by adding a water heater insulation blanket. Be careful to not cover the pressure release valve when you wrap the water heater.
A gas water heater, which is the most common of the two in Houston, looks similar to an electric water heater, except that it does not contain the two heating elements, but instead has a gas burner at the bottom, with the chimney running up through the middle of the tank.
Houston High Efficiency Water Heaters
The water heater in your Houston home or business is probably a cheep builders grade model. They heat the water flawlessly for about a decade, but they do so by consuming more natural gas or electricity than the Energy Star rated models available today. So the choice is yours: Pay more up front for the high efficiency model and save over the lifetime or pay less up front and pay a few dollars more per month to operate it for the next decade.
Houston and Harris County are Switching to Tankless Water Heaters
Commercial businesses and homeowners love the new tankless water heaters
installed by the Houston Plumber experts. They heat water directly without the use of a storage tank and avoid the standby heat losses associated with storage water heaters. Restaurants in Houston love them because they never run out of hot water and save precious floor space. Homeowners love them because they can fill the largest Jacuzzi and run a dishwasher at the same time.
Houston Water Heaters Waste Energy
Conventional, tank water heaters are not the green solution for heating water by any measure because water is constantly heated in the storage tank. The LP gas, natural gas or electricity can be wasted even when hot water isn't being used. This is called standby heat loss. Only tankless water heaters avoid standby heat losses. But there are some conventional storage water heater models with heavily insulated tanks, which significantly reduce standby heat losses, lowering annual operating costs. These models have a thermal resistance (R-Value) of R-12 to R-25 and carry the governments Energy Star rating.