So you need a new water heater? Yes, of course, you can carry out water heater installation yourself.

Just pop round to Home Depot or Lowes and buy one, and then plan on spending the whole weekend trying to figure out how it all fits together.

However, the first question that you need to ask yourself is what sort of water heater do I need? Water heaters come in all shapes and sizes and their sole purpose is to provide you and your family with hot water for bathing, showering, doing the dishes, laundry, and cooking.

Not only do they come in all shapes and sizes, but they also come in two different types: tank water heaters and tankless water heaters.  Traditional tank-type water heaters are quite bulky things and they store large amounts of water which is heated either by an electric element or a gas burner. There are lots of different makes, so if you are going for tank-type water heater installation you will need to know the differences between them.

Then there are tankless water heaters. These are much smaller than tank-type water heaters, and usually hang on the wall, so they don’t take up as much space as tank-type heaters. What these do is to heat your water on demand. When you turn on the tap, run a bath, or turn on the shower, they immediately heat the water so that it arrives hot at the tap.

Several Advantages Over Tank Type Water Heaters

This has several benefits over the old tank-type water heater, especially if you have a large family. With a tank-type water heater, if you draw enough hot water for a bath you will probably use most or all of the hot water in the tank. That means that if another family member also wants a bath or shower, they are going to have to wait until the heater has heated the next tankful of water from cold to the correct temperature.

With a tankless water heater, it doesn’t matter. The whole family can have a shower one after the other and they will all get hot water at the same temperature because it is heated on demand.

There are also cost-saving benefits with tankless water heaters. The average family spends $520 a year using a tank-type water heater, whereas a tankless water heater would cost $198 a year to run. Over a period of ten years, that is a saving of around $3,200 – enough for a nice holiday.

But whichever type of water heater installation you are considering, do yourself a favor: don’t try and install it yourself. Call Ben: we are the professionals.