Why Invest In A Quality Water Heater?
Point of use water heaters can cut the long wait for hot water to arrive after you open the faucet. It may seem obvious, but the length of time you wait depends on how far the faucet is from the water heater. The more pipe it has to travel through, the longer it takes.
A popular way to eliminate the wait is to install a point-of-use hot water heater. The name describes it exactly – a small device that heats water very close to the point where it’s used, such as a sink, shower, bathtub or washing machine.
It’s located near where there is a demand for hot water, so sometimes other terms are used, such as “on demand point of use hot water heater” or “POU water heater” or “point of service water heater” or “POS water heater.”
A point-of-use water heater can be added to a home’s existing plumbing without the need to re-do the whole plumbing system. Because of their small size, POU water heaters often are installed under a kitchen or bathroom sink.
If you don’t like waiting several minutes for hot water to get to the tap (and running up your water bill by wasting perfectly good water), a POS water heater provides a great solution. To see if it’s the right solution for you, consider the different types of equipment available, potential energy savings, and lifetime cost.
Point of Use Water Heaters and Instant Hot Water
The availability of hot water throughout our homes is a cornerstone of the modern world. One or more tank-type or tankless water heaters supply the whole home, but many homes have one or two hot water taps too far from the water heater to get hot water fast.
Point of service water heaters are becoming popular with growing numbers of homeowners who want the added comfort, convenience and efficiency they provide.
This may describe the situation in your home: You’re standing, probably shivering, waiting for hot water to flow from the shower faucet. All of that cold water rushing out of the shower head as you wait is the water that has been sitting in the length of pipe between your water heater and the shower. To shorten the wait, you must shorten the distance it travels.
Types of Point of Service Water Heaters
Just like with water heaters designed for a whole house, POS water heaters can either have a tank or be tankless.
- Point-of-use tank water heater: It’s like a traditional tank water heater, but with a considerably smaller tank because its designed to heat water at one or maybe two adjacent locations. Tank-type point of use water heaters typically store from 2.5 gallons to 20 gallons. They can provide instant hot water because they eliminate the distance from the heating source to the fixture.
- Point-of-use tankless water heater: A point-of-use tankless heater begins working when a faucet is turned or a button is pressed, so there will be a very short wait for hot water, but we’re talking about a few seconds. Tank-type POU heaters are slightly faster, but either way, the waiting time is drastically reduced. The upside of a point-of-use tankless water heater is that it requires less space than one with a tank.
Are POS Water Heaters Energy Efficient?
The answer to this one is easy. Whether you have an electric or gas point of use water heater, and whether it’s tankless or has a storage tank, it’s going to be an environmentally-friendly choice.
The reasons are simple:
- A point-of-use water heater eliminates wasting water that runs down the drain while the hot water travels from a distant water heater. It’s not uncommon for the wait to be a few minutes, and given that a typical shower uses 2.5 gallons of water per minute, the amount of wasted water can be staggering.
- The cold water that comes out of the faucet first was once hot water. It was heated by the water heater and delivered to the pipes before the faucet was turned off. The energy used to heat that water ends up being wasted when the water cools in the pipes after the demand for hot water ends. The net result is you waste both water and energy.
Reducing the amount of wasted water and energy will in turn reduce utility bills. Water heating systems are the second-largest user of energy in a home, and the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that electric water heaters can account for about 18% of a home’s total electricity bill.
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