When it comes to being safe and comfortable in your home, having adequate hot water is an absolute necessity. There are two main options when it comes to water heaters, which are the traditional tank and the newer tankless water heaters. With tankless water heaters growing in popularity due to their high operating efficiency, it's no surprise that you may be thinking about getting one for your house.

The Buzz About Tankless Water Heater Technology

Most people are familiar with the traditional tank water heater that has a large water storage tank. These units work by heating up the water in the tank with internal heating elements. These elements will kick on every so often to help maintain the temperature of the water until you need to use it. Unfortunately, with this style of water heater, you only have as much hot water as is in the storage tank. If you take back-to-back showers or run multiple appliances that use water at once, you'll likely run out of hot water and have to wait for the tank to refill and heat up again. This is where tankless water heaters fill in the gap. Instead of having to continually run to heat up water, tankless water heaters only run whenever you turn on your hot water faucet. As water flows through the water supply line, it goes through the tankless water heater, where it warms up and then gets delivered to your plumbing fixture. This ensures a high operating efficiency for your water heater and guarantees that you never run out of hot water. With their space-saving design coupled with their long lifespan, tankless water heaters are becoming a new favorite for most homeowners throughout the nation. As we transition into 2025, there are some great new technology features that are coming out in tankless water heaters that you may want to consider getting.

Smart Technology

One of the best integrations for tankless water heaters is with smart technology. This technology allows you to connect to your water heater via an app from your smartphone. You can do things like monitor your water usage, alter the temperature settings on your water heater, receive alerts about necessary maintenance and even be alerted whenever your unit experiences a malfunction. Smart technology really gives you more precise control over the functioning of your tankless water heater.

Scale-Resistant Heat Exchangers

A great update to new tankless water heaters is scale-resistant heat exchangers. Hard water is a known problem for any type of water heater, as its excess mineral sediments can easily adhere to the internal components of the water heater and cause premature deterioration. A scale-resistant heat exchanger helps to prevent mineral buildup and acts sort of like a self-cleaning feature. Its presence helps to reduce the need for frequent flushing and maintenance services. It also goes a long way toward helping to extend the overall longevity of your tankless water heater.

More Precise Temperature Control

Another great technology upgrade that we're seeing with tankless water heaters is more precise temperature control. Gone are the days of moving a round dial to get to the appropriate tick to get a relatively decent temperature. Nowadays, modern technology will actually test the output temperature of the water dozens of times a minute and make real-time adjustments when necessary. This means that if you set your water heater temperature to be at 136 degrees, you can be assured that it's going to show up at 136 degrees.

Smart Life Tracking

Some newer tankless water heaters are coming with Smart Life tracking technology. This is an integrated feature that helps to track the overall usage of your water heater and provides you with an estimated remaining lifespan. This will give you adequate time to prepare for a replacement to ensure that you don't ever have to deal with a water heater that completely breaks down on you.

Recirculating Pumps

Recirculating pumps are becoming a must-have feature of tankless water heaters. They're responsible for circulating water in your hot water supply lines to help ensure that it stays warm. These recirculation pumps control the temperature of the water that runs between your tankless water heater and your plumbing fixtures. Without a recirculating pump, when you first turn on a hot water faucet, you're going to get a stream of cold water to start with. This is until the water from the point of the tankless water heater reaches the plumbing fixture. Because this is inconvenient, recirculating pumps solve the problem of the initial cold water by ensuring that it stays nice and warm while in your piping.

Condensing Technology

Another great feature of newer tankless water heaters is condensing technology. This technology is solely available for units that burn natural gas as their main fuel source. Typically, a non-condensing water heater will burn natural gas and vent the exhaust by-products to the outside of your house. With a condensing unit, these exhaust by-products are recycled through a second heat exchanger unit. This unit burns all the exhaust fumes a second time to help capture any remaining energy before venting the resulting exhaust gases to the outdoors. While condensing tankless water heaters are more expensive to purchase, they do operate even more efficiently than non-condensing tankless water heaters.

Factors to Consider When Getting a Tankless Water Heater

With so many great new technology features coming out with tankless water heaters, now is a great time to consider investing in one. Apart from choosing the new technology features that you want to have in your water heater, there are some basic factors that you want to take into consideration to ensure that you get an appropriate one for your home. One of the most important is going to be the gallons per minute rating of the unit. Known as the GPM, this is a measurement of how many gallons of hot water the unit can produce in any given minute. You'll want to add up the flow rate of all your different fixtures to ensure that you know around how many gallons per minute maximum your new unit must have. Another thing to consider is the type of fuel that you want your new tankless water heater to use. Tankless water heaters can be fueled by propane, natural gas, or electricity. Typically, natural gas is going to be the most cost-effective fuel to run, while electricity is going to be the most expensive. Thinking of tankless water heaters? We are too. Our team at Benjamin Franklin Plumbing® offers reliable tankless water heater service. We can also assist with emergency plumbing and other plumbing services! Call our office in Mission Viejo today to schedule a water heater appointment with one of our plumbing professionals.