Heating water accounts for up to 30 percent of the average home's power spending budget. Some makers of gas-fired tankless water heaters claim their products can cut your energy costs as much as half over normal storage heaters. So is it time to switch?

Quite possibly not. Gas tankless water heaters, which use high-powered burners to speedily heat water as it runs through a heat exchanger, were 22 percent more power efficient on average than the gas-fired storage-tank models in our tests. That translates into a savings of around $70 to $80 per year, according to 2008 national energy costs. But simply because they cost much extra than storage water heaters, it can take as much as 22 years to break even-longer than the 20-year life of lots of models. Moreover, our online poll of 1,200 readers revealed wide variations in installation costs, power savings, and satisfaction.

Using the enable of an outside lab, we pitted Takagi and Noritz gas-fired tankless water heaters against 3 storage water heaters. We didn't test electric tankless heaters for the reason that lots of cannot deliver hot water quick enough to replace a conventional water heater if ground­water is cold. Even in regions with warm groundwater, most property owners would have to have to upgrade their electrical service to energy a whole-house tankless model.If there's cool water lingering in your pipes, you'll receive a momentary "cold-water sandwich" between the old and new hot water. And a tankless water heater's burner might not ignite when you try to get just a trickle of hot water for, say, shaving.

Our tests simulated every day use of 76 to 78 gallons of hot water. That's the equivalent of taking three showers, washing 1 laun­dry load, running the dishwasher as soon as (six cycles), and turning on the faucet nine occasions, for a total of 19 draws. While that's regarded heavy use compared with the regular Department of Power test, we feel it more accurately represents an average family's habits. We also ran much more than 45,000 gallons of quite difficult water through a tanked model and a Rinnai tankless model to simulate about 11 years of regular use.

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