The economics of heating water for your home are not something you think about very much. You have a hot water tank that is either gas or electric, and you use hot water. The bills you see are for your entire electric service, or your entire gas service. It probably never occurs to you to question how much of the bill is directly due to your hot water tank. But if you live in an average household, the cost of heating your water is probably a significant portion of your utility bill.
The basic problem is that hot water tanks are simply not efficient. They heat a large volume of water, and hold it in that heated state until you need it. The tank has to be large, or else you will run out of hot water before you fill the tub or finish your shower. But most of the time, you aren’t running hot water from the tank. Most of the time, the hot water just sits there, in the tank, slowly losing heat. And as the water cools down, the hot water tank kicks on in cycles, warming it up over and over. Most hot water tanks are well insulated, but they all still lose heat.
Another problem with water tanks is scale build up. Scale is a mineral deposit that comes from dissolved minerals in your water supply. This build-up clogs pipe openings and builds up on the heating element in electric hot water tanks. You can expect to replace a hot water tank every 5 to 7 years, due to scale.
But Titan tankless water heaters are different. There’s no large tank to hold hot water, because the water isn’t heated until the instant you need it. A Titan tankless water heater is essentially a small metal box, typically the size of a small attaché case. The box mounts on a wall, with a water line in and out, and is connected to either an electric power supply or a gas line. It is full of baffled channels, so that water must follow a long, winding path in order to pass through the box. The instant you turn on a hot water faucet, the box senses a flow of water through the channel and the powerful electric heating element (or gas burner) switches on.
All water passing through the box is instantly heated to temperature. The economy of this is obvious – you only pay to heat the water you actually use. Also, you never run out of hot water, because there is no set volume of water to use up. A Titan tankless hot water heater will continue to provide hot water until you turn off the tap. Tankless hot water heaters, in general, cost more than hot water tanks. However, they also last proportionately longer, so over the lifetime of the tankless heater the purchase cost is roughly the same.
Tankless hot water heaters come in many different sizes. The model you purchase should be matched to your hot water needs and the climate in which you live. For example, a person living in Minnesota needs a more powerful tankless water heater than a person living in Florida, where the water coming into the box is much warmer than the Minnesota water supply. Titan SCR2 Tankless Water Heater series models are designed to provide hot water to an entire household, but if you have one particular room or fixture that uses the majority of hot water, an extremely small model can provide water only to that room or fixture.
