Learn About Water Heaters

When your water heater stops working, you want to get it going again as soon as possible. Living without hot water is frustrating because you can't even do simple things like washing your dishes or taking a shower. You may find out that you need to get a new water heater instead of just repairing the one that you have. If that is what you need to do, you need to figure out what kind of water heater you want to get. Your two basic choices are to go with a traditional tank water heater, while the other choice is to go with something like a tankless water heater. 

Tank Water Heater

This may be the kind of water heater that you already have at your house. It will hold many gallons of water, it can be as much as 80 gallons. The water heater will have coils that heat up the water to your desired temperature. It will periodically heat up so that the water will stay at the temperature that you want. As you use the hot water and drain the tank, cold water fills the tank up and the heater turns on so that the water can get up to temperature. How long this takes depends on how much hot water you have taken out, how efficient your heating source is, and how hot you keep your water. If you drain out all the hot water, it can take quite a while in order to get back up to the temperature that you want. 

Tankless Water Heater

Tankless water heaters are also called inline water heaters or on-demand water heaters. They are installed directly into your plumbing lines. They will have an incoming water pipe and an outgoing pipe for the hot water. Instead of having a tank where the hot water is stored, the water runs through pipes in between heating coils in the tank. The water heats up a lot faster and gets to the faucet much faster.  The only time a tankless water heater is heating up water is when a hot water faucet is turned on and there is demand for it. With a tankless water heater, if you like to take hour-long hot showers, you are able to do that because there is always going to be hot water. 

If your water heater isn't working anymore, you want to do what you can to get your hot water back. That may involve getting a new water heater installed instead of repairing your old one.

For more information about water heater installation, contact a company like Scott's Heating & Air Conditioning Services.