Do I Need A Tankless Water Heater?

Nick's Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:

On today’s show, it’s all about tankless water heaters.

John Eccles. Richard Saad. So why do you need it? Why do you want it? That’s the questions of the day, right? That’s right. A lot of people want it. Do they really need it? A lot of people don’t really need it, but they want it. A lot of people want it and they actually need it. That’s right. Over the tongue twister one. And that was pretty good. We’re going to explain all this. You understand what I said? Actually, I’m a little confused. I figured so, hey, tankless water heaters is one of our hottest topics that has come into our office on our Facebook page. It comes from every angle that we deal with our customers, you know, and in a lot of times, uh, it’s, they need some more information on it. Although they’d been around for a really long time. They haven’t been around here for an extremely extended amount of years.

2002. Yeah. So it’s not, you know, now they’re becoming very, very mainstream and hot. You know, it’s a big hot, yeah. Hot Water. So anyway, that’s hot. John, let’s talk. Why do we think that you should need a tankless water heater versus the tank in it, right? First thing that comes to mind for me is that they’re more efficient, right? Which means that they’re going to be a greener choice. They’re going to conserve, you know, the gas usage that you’re gonna be using, right. Saving that natural resource. That’s right. But yeah, it’s, it’s a much greener option because they, um, they don’t conserve as much because they’re not having the heat water throughout the entire day. They are on an on demand system, meaning when you demand hot water, that system gives it to you. And so, um, being a greener choice, that’s a big deal for a lot of people and a lot of different, uh, states nowadays.

And it’s a big deal here in Houston, a lot of customers. So that would be a need portion for me. Why do you need it? It’s more efficient and greener for Yah. Absolutely. So if you guys think about this, you’ve got a 40 or 50 gallon tank up in your attic, right? All right. And, and this goes back to what we were talking about the other day as well, that these units have come down in price. Everything’s come down in price. So they’re almost about the same cost. Of course, they’re more expensive than a tank. Oh yeah. But they’ve gotten so much more affordable and your payback is so much quicker. And in an attic when you have 40 or 50 gallons in there, it’s working the hardest when in the winter. Absolutely. Right. So it’s trying to heat that water to 110 hundred and 20 degrees, maybe 130 depending on what you’re keeping it on that take us in the attic.

It’s having to work so much harder. What, five, six months out of the year to keep that temp up at the level that you’re requesting. This is burning all the time throughout the day. It’s burning a lot during the day when you’re not home, you’re at work and it’s burning when we’re sleeping. Right. Alright. And it burns 24 hours a day off and on. Can’t stop it. And it set to that temperature that your requested. Yeah. So that’s a big deal. What does a tank do? It doesn’t do that. And that goes back to what John said, a tankless water heaters aren’t on demand system, right? So when you demand that hot water is when that unit comes on, everything fires up when you demand it. Yeah. So let’s talk about the next one. Another need. Right? The reason why I say that you need it, I think that a tankless water heater is a safer option.

Right? And I can see that. Yeah. Let me explain. Right? So if I leave water in a tank on, I have a tank for my entire life and I never change it, what eventually is going to happen? That tank is going to bust, right? Just going to happen 40 or 50 gallons of water, depending on where it’s at. My house, even if it’s in the ground floor in the utility closet, is still going to create an issue for me. Absolutely. Heaven’s forbid it is upstairs, you know, no one likes to talk about this, but if it is in the attic and you do have it burst and it’s 50 gallons of water from upstairs, who knows what’s underneath it. You know what room is underneath that? Hopefully it’s a play room that nobody’s in. But if not, I mean it can be a catastrophe. The, what’s the word I’m looking at?

Tasks. Trophy. Yeah, the, here you go. It can be one of those situations that’s just not good. A tankless water heater, you’re not gonna have that problem. They don’t have a storage tank. Right. So all storage tanks will fail. Yeah. Just guess, just the way it works. Just give it enough time and it will fail. And it depends on how big of a hole. When it decides to fail on the damage it’s going to create. We’ve seen them where it’s a small hole, the pan can handle it. But I would tell you 99% of the time when those fail, that pan cannot handle it. And if you’re out of town, which you know, plumbing likes to break on a Friday night, always, um, and you’re out of town, then it’s going to run all weekend. It will never stop running. And the water supply, we’ll keep trying to fill that tank and so it will empty out that 40 or 50 gallons and keep filling.

So it turns into thousands of gallons potentially into your home. What does the tankless do? Tankless operates like a car radiator. It’s got a radiator in there and it’s a pass through system. It’s not holding water like that tank is. That’s right. You know, and they’d been out since o two. I have not seen one fail from the standpoint of that radiator breaking, let’s call it a radiator. That radiator that’s holding it in, it’s passing through water. I’ve never seen it get a hole. So there you go. Since o two, I have not seen it. Could it happen? Yes. But it’s not going to be 50 gallons dropped out and no. Yeah, it’s going to operate much differently than that. So the third one that I’m going to say as a need, right. And we’re going to have to explain, cause I know that people out there who’ve done research and so this is going to take some, it’s going to cost you less money.

All really. And they’re gonna say, well how’s that? It’s you’re giving me your estimate to replace, it’s more than the tank. So let me explain a couple things. One, a tankless water heater, average life expectancy night. It’s Max life explore. The average life expectancy is normally twice as long as the tank water here. So that means you’re gonna have to replace two tanks versus one tankless. And just like Richard mentioned earlier, you know, the pricing is becoming already more competitive with them. So yeah, even if it’s close or if it’s a little bit more, it’s gonna be a little bit more up front, but you’ll get to lifespans out of it. Right. And I would say you’d get more, oh yeah, this is average. I’m going on manufacturer averages. There’s a lot of them that lasts. If they’re installed properly and maintained last well beyond probably I would go and say three tanks.

Yeah. And let’s define that because that’s a whole miss number there too. Because all of these tankless water heaters or plug in play, there’s about six components. So if the thing is not going to bus like a tank, that’s right, you can pull this part out, that failed, put a new part in and try it. So this thing technically could last our whole lifetime. Yeah. Right. And now a component might fail, but you replace the component. You know, normally whenever we’re talking about old tankless units that had been out since the beginning, normally they get replaced because either they weren’t maintained. So now it’s kind of impossible to do those things or technology, just like everything else advances past and people liked that new technology and some things that those new units have the offer. So they want to upgrade and, and you know, you know, things do happen.

But in a case by case saying, hey, you wouldn’t have to, you know, you’re going to get two to three, maybe even longer life expectancy. So it’s going to cost you far less in the long run than a tank heater. Now again, that goes back to maintain. Yup. Right. If you maintain it, it’s like your car. You’re going to change the oil in your car. That’s called maintaining your car. That’s right. Do that with a tankless. It’ll, it’ll keep going and running and you’re not even worried about it and try it. It’s going to go. So let’s talk about once, let’s say I really don’t need it, but I want it, but I want it. And you know what? I wanted it. And in fact, I threw away. I’m one of those guys that got flooded and Harvey and I threw away my perfectly good tankless because I wanted a different tankless.

I wanted one with a pump. Oh, you threw away a tankless for a tankless. I throw away. I think it was for a tankless. Wow. Okay. I just threw it away for no reason. Okay. But I wanted to take this with a pump because I had to tear the whole house up. I could get return lines in and I wanted endless hot water and instant hot water, right? Oh yeah. There’s a whole big difference here. People, we get asked all the time, if we go at the tank, I get instant hot water. No, you get endless hot water. There’s a big difference. So my tankless that I had, uh, would give me endless hot water. I had to go to a different tankless because I wanted instant hot water. So now I’ve got a pumping system that keeps my whole house hot instantly. Okay. So let’s talk about endless real fast.

When you say endless hot water. So I remember growing up and obviously tankless warrant around whenever I was growing up. And I remember many times I had two sisters and I was the youngest. So I had the shower third and I, there’s many times that my shower ended up being a much colder shower than there. Hey, weren’t you from East Texas? I thought you all took a shower at one time though. So I, and I think that a lot of our customers can understand what we’re talking about when you run out of hot water, either mid shower or while you’re doing the dishes or whatever the case is. Um, those tank heaters just can’t keep up. Like what if you have a soaker tub? Average gallon per soaker tub? What is it? 250 gallons. 250 gallons is how big and almost soaker tub is. So if you’ve got a 50 gallon water heater, you do the math, you do the math, how does that work?

I don’t know how that works, but home builders are putting those in all the time. Home builders are putting in soaker tubs these days. It’s like a standard, um, install. Now for these home builders that has homes and they put in one 40 gallon water heater. Yeah. It’s just not going to be sufficient. And that if you’re planning on doing anything else, how does that math work? Because as a math work, right? So when we say endless, you know, we’re talking about endless, right? Obviously they gotta be sized right for the house, but you’re talking, you can take a thousand showers back to back to back to back to my bag, bag, bag bag, and always have hot water. Endless. Endless. Yes. Now let’s go back to the instant because that’s a big deal. A lot of people, they don’t want to wait, right? Right. They want instant.

So there are different models. Like Richard was saying a second ago that offer, you know, and obviously there’s some upgrades you can do, the one that doesn’t have it built in, but there’s now the tankless have it offered, built in where you have that, that pump that gets you instant hot water, you turn on hot water, boom. It’s there. No Way. It’s right there, you know? And uh, that’s a big deal to some people. That’s a big one. You know, when we talked, that was a big one for me when we talked to customers on the phone, they’re like, hey, when I get up in the morning and I get in the shower, I want water now. Right. You know, so just think how much water that actually saves to get instant hot water that goes back to the green. It does. I mean thinking about that, you know, a lot of guys, you’re, you’re going to relate to this, a lot of homes and, and you’re waiting a minute up to five minutes to get hot water, deer sync where you’re brushing your teeth or do you want to wash your face to your shower?

It can take up to five minutes. So no one thinks about this. Think about how many gallons per minute that’s actually wasting. It’s monumental. It would blow your mind over a year’s time how much water that is gone, especially extrapolated with a population. That’s exactly right. It’s mindblowing now in saying that you can get it, you can purchase a tankless that has a pump and you’re waiting seconds, not minutes. Yeah. So, and that’s what I wanted. I, you know, my fixtures are kind of far from each other and um, I probably had to wait about a minute and a half with the original tank with my original tank or tankless, cause remember a tank or tankless is going to deliver hot water the exact same time, right? Right. Unless you do something different, right? Move the tankless or move the tank or you put a pumping system like I did.

All right. So it, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s awesome. And those are probably our two, number one and two once, right? Definitely endless hot water, instant hot water. Some of the less conventional ones, you know, space savings depending on where your water heater is, right? We’ve got a lot of them in the attic, but a lot of people in Texas use their adequate storage space when now you get a little bit of that space back. Or if the water heaters located in utility closet right now, you can get that closet back or in your garage, you get that space back, you know? Um, some people that wasn’t originally on their list, but once we installed one, they’re like, oh man, this thing doesn’t take up nearly as much room as the, you know, tank water heater. I got a little bit of room back and that’s an advantage.

That’s a want that, you know, some of them liked whenever they saw it. Yeah, absolutely. It is. Now when, when my tank, uh, it did bust in my tank was seven, so I got home from work and I was working crazy hours back then and I got home at eight o’clock at night and I have water streaming out of my garage and it was an inch deep in my garage. If my tank had been in the Attic, oh my whole house would have been flooded. So it was screaming out of the garage. I get home and I was just already beat up tired. I go and just turn it off and went and flipped channels to be stupid for a while and fixed the next day. This can’t be my life. And that’s when I went with my first tank less right. And then I took my tank lists from the garage and I put it outside.

Yeah. Outdoor you. So I ran my waterlines outside and put it outside. So I freed up a lot of space in my garage. Cool. Yeah, I’m super excited and I already had it planned to do that. I just wanted my tank. The last, you know, they, they supposed to go seven to 10 and on seven at decides to create a large hole in it. So it kind of pushed you to, they pushed me for that. That’s right. So another one that everybody loves about the tankless units is that they’re just so much more technically advanced than tank tank style units. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot of gadgets that go into this and we’re going to do a future show. We’ve already talked about this, where we’re going to show you the inner workings of a tankless unit and you’re gonna be able to see for yourself that it’s a much more complicated system than just your standard tank.

Um, but nowadays, I mean, they got it where the controls can be done on an APP Wi-fi. Uh, you can change the temperature yourselves, you can set setting so it knows when you’re going to be home. All of these different things are starting to get in that range of home automation. It’s right and, and those tankless units are right on the cutting edge of, of keeping up with that whole thing. That’s right. And in fact next week you guys were probably going to bring a unit in here and show you the inner workings of it. You know, why is it more expensive? Why is it more expensive all the way around, which is why is it hard to install wall? Why does it take a special set of hands and eyes and skillset to work on them? It’s a, it’s a much different system that’s Ryan than the other getting to be more like your AC systems.

Absolutely. Right. I mean we could actually go out and buy a tank off the shelf and that thing’s pretty dummy proof. I mean there, there’s not very many components. It’s just kind of dummy proof. Right? Well compare to you. How’s this thing is very advanced and just like our AC systems have become very advanced. I’ve got a buddy in the AC system, a AC industry, and he used to tell me whenever we would start talking about it, he says, man, they’re very similar to like, you know, cause it has a heat exchanger and a control board and all those things. It’s very, very similar. Yeah, absolutely. Now the other good thing is so that we covered need him once, right? So here’s, here’s a little thing that you need to know about Nick’s plumbing, right? There’s, there’s many brands out there, but probably the three most popular across the nation, especially hearing Houston’s going to be Rinnai nor it’s in Navien.

Those are the three Cadillacs, right? The good thing about Nick’s, we are an authorized and recommended installer and service provider for all three major brands. You know, so that’s something that you need to know that, hey, and in fact with two of those brands, we are actually the Goto company to go fix those brands. So when they’re having issues and problems in Houston, they call us out to go get them rectified in fixed. Yeah. So if you are having, you know, questions or concerns, obviously you know that when you’re calling, you’re in good hands and then we can give you some information and steer you the right direction. And that’s right. So any questions, concerns. If you have a tank, have a tankless already, something is going wrong. You have any question that you can think of. John and I are here. We will help you guide you, do whatever we need to get you in the right path, whether you use us or not. Absolutely. Thank you for watching. Thank you so much.

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