Keep Your Water Heater Healthy & Avoid Cold Showers
When you’re really tired, try making your shower water cold for a few seconds. It’s an excellent trick to help jolt you awake. But can you imagine taking your entire shower without hot water?
We often take our warm water for granted. Although, given a choice, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would willingly give up hot showers and baths. The water heater is one of the most essential appliances in our home, but one that we don’t fully appreciate until it malfunctions.
How Does the Warm Water Get to the Faucet?
Water flows through your home in one of two basic pipe systems: into your house as fresh water, or out as wastewater. The fresh water is cold and ready to be used without any additional processing.
To get warm water, the fresh water diverts from the cold-water supply line into the water heater. When you use your bathroom plumbing, water flows out of the heater and into your faucet.
There, it mixes with the cold water. If you look under your sink, you’ll see the two pipes feeding your faucet. The cold and warm lines stay separated and mix only when they come out of the tap. If you need a new water heater, there are two popular types available: standard reservoir-style, and tankless.
Reservoir heaters hold a set amount of hot water in them, which they heat with either a gas or an electric heating element at the bottom of the tank. The downside of this style of heater is that once you’ve used all of the hot water in the tank, you have to stop what you’re doing and let the heater warm more.
Tankless water heaters don’t have a reservoir. Instead, they warm water on-demand as it flows through the heater. Essentially, you have an unlimited supply of hot water. Your entire family can shower back-to-back, and then you can throw in a load of laundry without waiting for more water to warm.
Mobile Home Water Heaters
Mobile home owners must install water heaters that comply with federal regulations. Prefabricated homes are smaller than other houses and the spaces where homeowners install their water heaters are often cramped.
The regulations ensure that water heaters for mobile homes are safe for tight spaces. Manufactured homes often cannot accommodate a full-sized water heater unless they have a large exterior compartment.
If you want to take a long, luxurious shower, you may have to turn the water temperature down to eek a bit more time out of a smaller tank. If you need a new water heater, have a professional help you selected one that’s suitable for your space and has the reservoir capacity you want.
Should You Install Your Own Water Heater?
Although the Home Depot water heaters are tempting right after you’ve taken a cold shower, you should have a professional help you select and install a new water heater.
There’s nothing wrong with Home Depot, in fact, we frequent the store, but there are some home projects that are best done by experienced professionals.
There are a lot of steps to remove and replace a water heating system, especially if you decide to switch from a reservoir-style to a tankless heater. It would be a real shame to spend hours trying to do the installation yourself, only to realize later that you missed a step and still don’t have hot water.
A professional will ensure that your new heater is installed correctly and can offer tune-ups after the installation to keep your new water heater running well. Has your water heater ever gone kaput while you were mid-shower? Tell us about it! And next time your water heater malfunctions, give Primo Plumbing Inc a call.
