The Advantages Of Instant Water Heaters

Instant Water Heaters are also known as Demand or Tankless Water heaters. Of course, the main question is why would you want to switch to instant water heaters? To answer this question, we would have to make a comparison between traditional and such new models.

Traditional water heaters work by heating the water slowly but constantly throughout the day and store the heated water in an insulated tank, so that's it's available when you need it. Now, there are two big disadvantages about this approach. First of all, you can quickly run out of hot water, because the tank can hold up only about 80 to 100 litres, depending on the model, and that's enough for taking one or two quick showers. So as you can see, there is a serious problem with hot water if you have a bigger family with four or more members. The second drawback is the low level of energy efficiency. This comes from the fact that, because the water must be kept hot non-stop, the water heater has to use a certain amount of energy all the time, which adds up at the end on your electric or gas bill. So whit conventional water heaters, what you got is big bill and not much hot water.

So that's how engineers had to think of something new. A new idea that will eliminate all these disadvantages. But as it usually works out in live, we first have to do things one way or another (efficiently or not), before we can start building up on the original idea and improving it as much as possible. Or in other words, conventional water heaters set the way for instant water heaters. Instant water heaters do not have a storage tank, so there is no need to waste energy all the day long to keep that limited amount of water hot. With instant water heaters, the water is only heated when needed. In that way, instant water heaters not only save energy, but they never run out of hot water.

Instant water heaters work in a very simple and smart way. When you turn on the hot water faucet, a sensor detects that water is moving and turns on a bank of heating elements or modules. The water passes over the heating modules, usually in series, and exits the heater at the desired temperature. The heating elements must be very high powered since water just passes through them. This power can comes from burning gas or from electricity. That's why there are gas tankless water heaters and electric tankless water heaters.