The Difference Between Storage And Tankless Water Boilers

Water heaters are one of the highest contributors to the energy bill. Residential and commercial buildings are looking for cost effecting heating solutions to bring down their utility bills. People are asking for innovative and smart products to reduce their monthly expenses. Water boiler manufacturers understand the need to provide smart solutions and constantly innovate to satisfy the needs of the people. Water boilers can be divided into tank storage model and tankless model. A detailed description of the two is given below:

Tank storage water boilers
Traditionally water heaters come in storage format. It consist of insulated tank holding a capacity of 20 to 120 gallons, loaded with electric heating element to heat the water in the tank. In this setup, cold water input is placed at the bottom and hot water output is at the top. Which means as you draw hot water, the cold water beneath gets heated to give you more hot water. In this model there are chances that the heat is lost through the tank walls. Despite the tank being insulated temperature difference around the insulated wall is higher and despite the insulation the heat loss is considerable high.

Tankless water boilers
Tankless model is growing in popularity for continuous heating process and energy saving proposition. Tankless model was developed as a remedy to cutting down on standby heat loss as well as exhausting all the hot water. This is virtually a new model just a decade old. This type of tank is installed in the bathroom and in certain places centrally to have access to hot water. With this model there is no shortage of hot water, The water heating potential of the heater is large enough to meet the growing demands of the family or guests. Moreover, there is no worry of heat loss. But this case the heat loss may occur in the pipes. The Consumer Report article 2008 reveals that gas fired tankless water heater use 22% less energy than tank storage heaters.

All you want to know about the heating elements
The right storage size based on the number of members in the family can ensure that adequate electricity is used to heat up the water. The heating element is small despite the size of the storage unit. In the case of gas fired storage, the burners are small to a range of 30,000 and 50,000 Btu/hour. For this capacity a gas line just ½” diameter would be adequate. In this case the air intake is modest.

In the case of tankless storage the burners are larger in size. For a whole house model with two showers and hot water for washer and dishwasher, the burner will produce 180,000 Btu/hour. The highest capacity tankless water heater will have a burner capacity of 300,000 Btu/Hr. Larger burners means higher supply of gas or propane when compared to fuel required to run a storage water boiler.

Electric tankless water heater comes with bigger challenges as it needs to serve the whole house and draw huge amount of electricity.

Read More : An In-depth Look At Boilers And Steamers

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