Picking the Right Water Heater in Houston

Nobody wants to say goodbye to their water heater, but sadly, every seven-to-ten years, homeowners everywhere must do exactly that. In terms of convenience, there is no greater emergency in our homes than a lack of hot water. From bathing to laundry to even cooking….everything comes to a stop without hot water.

 

PUT SOME THOUGHT INTO MAKING YOUR WATER HEATER PURCHASE

Quite often, the homeowner is “forced” into a water heater purchase;not on the part of the plumbing company, but due to the circumstance. It is literally a repair that can’t wait. Consumers can put more research and thought into the purchase of a car or a television, whereas, no one gathers up the family and goes “water heater shopping” and do price and feature comparisons.

A Large, Medium, and Small Sized Electric Water Heater

Homeowners are often completely unaware of what’s available in terms of features and capacity and think a new water heater is still $500…often resulting in “sticker shock”, making picking the right water heater in Houston a difficult task.

Houston Plumber Checking the Thermostat

WHAT SHOULD I BE CONSIDERING IN A NEW WATER HEATER PURCHASE?

A lot of variables go into picking the right water heater for your home, with the most important being the type of unit. There are two different types of water heaters currently available those being tank-type and tankless.

Tank-type water heaters have been the standard for close to one-hundred years, despite being totally energy inefficient. Consider the amount of energy needed to keep a forty-gallon tank

heated to one-hundred-and-twenty degrees or more, twenty-four hours a day. At Nick’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning Services, tank-type units account for most of our water heater installations, by a margin of 80 / 20.

It is important to consider how many bathrooms your home has before deciding on a particular water heater. A forty-gallon tank is great for a home with one bathroom, but for homes that require simultaneous showers or have heavy laundry demands, tanks of up to seventy-gallon capacity are available.

Tankless water heaters on the other hand, have available hot water flow of anywhere from 3.5 to 7 gallons per minute. For a small house, a 3.5 gallon per minute unit may suit your needs perfectly whereas a larger home with multiple bathroom may require a 7 gallon per minute flow.

NICK’S PLUMBING & AC HAVE BEEN THE WATER HEATER EXPERTS IN HOUSTON FOR DECADES

Regardless of what you end up deciding to install in your home, call Nick’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning Services for a cost evaluation, or a second opinion. Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning has been installing tank and tankless water heaters in the Houston area for over forty years. Since 1979, Houston has made Nick’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning Services a favorite choice for any plumbing services.

Nick's Plumbing and Sewer Services Houston Logo

Call Nick’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning Services today. We’re on the Way!

THE POTTY MOUTH GUYS SHOW:

Picking the Right Water Heater in Houston

 

Experts Sitting at a News Desk in Downtown Houston Discussing Water Heaters

Nick's Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:

I’m John heckles Richard side. We’re back for another week. Answer your questions. Help you out so you make good decisions, better decisions for you and your family. Try it. We’re here to hell today. We’re going to help you guys select the right type of water heater for your home, right? Any questions? This is hitting the basics. We’re going to tell you a few things. You can always call the office right? Always there and we will help you figure it out. So what’s the problem, right? Oh, when it comes to the household emergencies, there’s usually no bigger emergency than a broken water heater. Why is that an emergency? You’re taking a cold shower. Do you have any phone calls? We have people calling us up screaming. Oh yeah. Huh? Produces anger. It will get some anger management issues over. This stuff produces urgency too. Yeah. Hey, can you come right now?

Like right now? Yeah, right now. Yeah, and we try you guys. We really try to come right now and typically in one day we will have your hot water heater back up and running either with a new one or fixing that one. That’s right. Depending on age and everything else. Broken and water heater is one of those home repairs that really can’t wait. All we need hot water for is the most basic human needs like cooking and bathing. Right? Yeah. And since most of us aren’t set up with a giant [inaudible] in our backyard. Right. What’s that word? Cauldron. Look what you’re saying. That big word today. It’s not like you. Hey cauldron. Say it again. Cauldron. Okay. Keep going. Second. Which is what you want to say about it. Look, none of you people have a giant black pot in the back of your backyard to heat up water in. Right, right. And a fire. Thanks. Would, yeah. Okay. We’re not doing it like in the twenties yeah. Back when Gerald was born. Oh, hope it on. See the show.

But anyway, we don’t have those things, so we need how we need the a, the hot water heater. It’s really important to be able to get someone who’s qualified in either to repair or replace your water heater as soon as possible to get your home back to normal. That only makes sense. Absolutely does. Now on this show, we’re not going to try to steer you in the direction of any particular brand. We’re just going to be trying to give you a little guidance as to what type and size of water heater might be best for your particular installation. That’s right. Replacing a water heater or something. Every homeowner needs to do every seven to 10 years. Tank type water heaters are in that age. Rain already start to lose efficiency due to worn out parts sludge in the tank. Burner’s not burning properly. [inaudible] Becomes very inefficient after replacing one or more of these parts, the law of diminishing returns starts to come into play.

Oh, for sure. I mean that ad, it just simply becomes is it worth it, not worth it to repair your heater again and again and again. After seven I say no, seven repairs are yours either one. Right. The problem we often see with water heater replacements is that usually when people make a large purchase like a car or a new TV, they really do do their homework on those items. Yeah. They make some comparisons between what brands models, opinions to make an informed decision. Right. People rarely have the opportunity opportunity to do that when they do a water heater replacement. Absolutely. Right. It’s an emergency. I need it now. I have no hot water. My wife’s cold. All those things. When was the last time you gathered up the family and went water heater shopping? John, you ever gone water heater shopping? I tried to do it once or twice a month. Wow. Okay.

I don’t know and I don’t ever drained mine either, so it’s like, you know who does that look also, no one ever truly anticipates that their water heater is going to fail or that it’s going to go out. The customers, most of the time, uninformed purchase, do the fact that they need to restore hot water, their home quickly. As a result, people often end up buying underpowered or underperforming units for the workloads that they’re expecting. It to carry and then they’re not satisfied at the end of the day. So next plumbing wants to help you avoid the agony of having the wrong water heater installed. All right, John, we want to discuss what type of water heater, what you have, what you need. Right. Tanks have water heaters have been the standard for decades and what the seven, the 10 year lifespan are pretty predictable expense for our homeowners, so they’re pretty reliable and we’ll give you trouble free service for a long period of time if they’re properly maintained, which means that they’re drained and serviced once a year and until that time becomes, you know who does that?

Professional plumbers. Oh, okay. Tankless water heaters often offer several right over the tank type unit. That’s their ancestors. The tank type unit. Absolutely right. Inglis is the noon. They are far more efficient simply because they do not require keeping a container of water heated 24 hours a day. So if your tank water heater goes out, you guys really need to consider a tankless water heater for the home. It’s the new technology is coming into the age, right? They are more expensive today, but they’re very much more efficient and that’s really kind of the biggest conflict right now is when we replaced the while here there, should I go tankless? Should I stay with the tank? You know that that’s a, that’s a big decision that homeowners have to make nowadays. Yeah. Usually it comes down to economics, right? Yeah. How much money something’s going to cost.

Right. You know, but you have to look past the money and also look at what are you getting, what’s the value, right. Yeah. How much longer is it gonna last? All those questions that you need to be asking, right. Typically about double is what I’d tell people how long are they going to last? So it’s the initial cost of the acquisition. How long do they last? Do some simple math. Then you can work it out to what’s going to benefit you in the family. Yeah. You know, tank type water heaters are still the most popular type that we do install. When you’re getting ready to replace your current water heater, take a minute and think, have you been happy with your current water heater? If the answer is yes, then we can absolutely replace that with one. Just like the one that’s been working for you and your family this whole time.

True. If you’ve noticed that your water heater is simply doesn’t produce enough hot water for every one in a home, you may want to upgrade that to the different size of your water heater. Or again, tankless tank type units started a capacity of 40 gallons and actually 30 but most homes, we’re not going to talk about 30 today. Cause we don’t put in thirties you don’t need a 30 even if you have a one bathroom house, you get a 40 that’s right. That’s standard, right? When you go sell your home, the inspector is going to look at that and go out and you get a 30 even if you’ve got one bathroom, get a 40 that’s right. So it’s gotta be sized, right? You’ve got to do it appropriate to the amount of bathrooms that you have, the amount of shower heads that you have.

Do you have, how many are garden tubs and how many, right? What are you filling with a water heater? Taking this, taking the consideration number of people in your household, especially if that numbers have increased since the last time you had a water heater. Put in. An average shower uses anywhere from 15 to 25 gallons of water. Having three or four people needing showers right after one another. Even sometimes even at the same time, 40 gallons goes pretty quickly. Most people don’t know that trivia, that’s a lot of gallons. Think about this a little. It is. Your water heater is trying to work to recover that amount of gallons of loss, so you’ve got cold water going into the tank, filling the tank back up and it’s having to reheat. Just think of the energy that’s taken. There’s a lot of energy, John, for homes that tend to use a lot of hot water and more than one area of the home simultaneously.

Showers, laundry sinks. It’s, you can put in a larger water heater, right? 70 gallon larger. It’s put in two fifties yeah, but that doesn’t make sense. Putting in a tankless, cheaper, more efficient. That’s right. It’s going to give you endless hot water. So if your requirements have changed in your home since the last water heater replacement, you need to consider that right now I would never put two fifties in my house. Why the cost difference is nominal between the tank versus are those two tanks versus the tankless? Yeah. Yeah. It’s important to remember though that tankless water heaters also have a limit to the amount of hot water they can produce. You know, usually the entry level water heaters have an output rate of about five gallons per minute where you can get larger units that are capable of putting up eight gallons a minute depending on some different things.

But when you’re talking about these things, you know the water in your home, you want to go tankless route, make sure that is big enough to satisfy your needs. Yeah. So just like the tank you use, they’re still like capacity that you need to be aware of. You’ve got to hire a good plumbing company, absolutely one that knows about tankless, one that understands how to size it to the home because they make all different sizes of tankless, just like water heaters. You know, a big thing in this industry to jump off topic real quick is not only do they size it, not enough. A lot of times they’ll give you something that’s too much. Right. And I know that sounds silly. You mean what do you mean they’re giving you a water heater that costs X amount when you could get the one that’s probably a one less that’s more financially comfortable for you and it will be more than enough hot water for you.

That goes back to hiring a good plumbing company. Absolutely. That understands how to appropriately size. Yup. And then it gets put back on you. Hey, I can up-size this. Yup. We can’t go down, but you can buy more if you want more. Right. And give you that option. So hot water needs right on these hot water needs. Sorry, my throat’s a little scratchy today on these hot water needs. If you need more than what that hot water heater can deliver. Right, right. It’s easy to install a second tankless water heater. Yeah. Right. Totally. In tandem, just like the tank. Sure. So on tankless you can put in to tank lists. Yeah. Right. Same thing. So if your demands are higher than what one tankless can give you, you can do two, you can do three. It’s, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. And then make it work.

The configuration is pretty wild, right. You can do them in tandem or you can do them separately in two different of the house. Right. That means separating your hot water line, which we do that all the time. Yeah. So you can run X amount of bathrooms on one water heater or tankless [inaudible] same as the other side. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ve helped you, you know, in the decision making process a little bit involving with the, the, the thinking that goes around placing your water heater to at least make it a little easier on you. Don’t forget, always hire a professional plumbing company to install your new water heater or your tankless water heater. Very important. And we know that we’ve covered a lot of stuff today, so if we missed anything or if you have questions, we’ll be available here on Facebook as well as on our YouTube channel not long after this airs. So if you have anything that we missed, feel free to take a second look. Yeah, as always, call John and I, you have questions. This stuff is easy for John and I, but it can be very complicated. Call us, we’ll answer your questions. We will help you whether you hire us any way that we can, we will help you make a good decision. Ultimately, it will be your decision. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Was to catch on next time.

Leave a comment

ThemeREX © 2024. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Schedule an Appointment


This will close in 0 seconds

Join our VIP membership program for just $19.79 per monthLearn More
+