A common question that’s asked is “should I get a tankless water heater?”. The answer is “it depends”, before you can decide if you should get a tankless water heater it’s important to know the difference between a standard water heater and a tankless. A standard water heater works by taking water from the houses main water supply into a large storage tank and heating water to a preset temperature. That water is then stored until it is used, the heater will continue to replenish itself and heat water to refill itself, albeit slowly. Heating water requires energy usually in the form of natural gas or electricity and the energy is used as the heater works to replenish itself. The draw back to standard water heaters is that it can require a significant amount of energy to operate under normal conditions. They don’t have the same life span as tankless water heaters, and usually take up a fair amount of space (about the size of a small closet).The benefits of a standard water heater are lower upfront costs to replace or install new systems, and standard water heaters can distribute as much hot water as the pipes will allow all at once.
Tankless water heaters are beneficial in that they usually last a very long time and have long warranties (warranties average about 15 years). Tankless heaters will never run out of water as they keep supplying hot water on demand, they are more efficient and do not have as much heat loss which means less energy loss saving you money to operate the unit (as much as 20 percent from your water heating bill), they take up very little space, and most units come with a federal tax rebate. The draw backs to tankless units are that they are more expensive for the unit itself, they may require you to add larger natural gas lines and new venting, electric models can require that another circuit be added and they may have some lag time for when hot water arrives to the desired fixture. Ultimately it comes down to what you want out of a water heating unit, but as it stands now tankless systems are proving to be a well worth long term investment.
Percentage shown were gathered from: https://home.howstuffworks.com/tankless-water-heater3.htm
