Home Tankless Hot Water Heaters

Are you considering a home tankless hot water heater? Today there are many choices and options if you want to make this type of upgrade in your home.

While a business definitely has to consider usage factors, home users may have a little more flexibility. If you have only one or two home users, smaller point of use or an electric tankless home heater may do the trick for you. With three or more users, a little additional research should be done up front to make sure your new tankless water heater has enough juice to keep up with family demands.

So how do you go about sizing a home tankless water heater. Well to do that we have to get into BTU and GPM discussions. Yes I know you don’t really want to get into the math, but a little math now makes the family happy later. BTU or British thermal unit has to do with power inputs and energy efficiency. These combine to hopefully give you the proper flow rate information.

Flow rate is what you really need, and is expressed at gallons per minute, or GPM. Home tankless hot water heaters will usually deliver between 1.2 and 6 gallons per minute of hot water. How much water is that?

Small point of use water heaters are used for just a bathroom sink or maybe two are in the low range here. Typically, you won’t need more that 2 gallons of hot water at a time so that is where something that is rated 1.2 GPM will work out okay.

Mid-range home tankless hot water heaters are in the 2.6 to 4 gallons per minute range. This range is probably where 75 percent of US homes will be able to find an acceptable tankless water heater option. At the low end, you can usually run one application at a time, such as a shower or a dish washer. At the 4 GPM rate, you will generally be able to use two hot water applications at the same time.

Finally, we come to the Big Boys when we are talking home tankless water heaters. Those rated in the 6 gallons or per minute range fall into this category. A six gallon heater can handle two showers at a time, while something in the area of 8-9 gallons per minute can handle three hot water applications at the same time.

So think about how your family uses the various applications, then check with a local dealer to find the best home tankless hot water heater for you.