How to be Cost Effective When Buying a New Water Heater: Bottom Line, Save Money

The situation described in this article only relates to
tank-type water heaters.  Solar water heaters and tankless
water heaters do not apply to this information.

You can do many things to keep an old heater going and make
it last as long as possible.  You could buy a new tank with
the latest technologies. A new tank can be more effective
than sprucing up the old water heater.  Of course, simply
repairing an old water heater could be far cheaper than
doling out a lot more money for a new one.  Which to do?

It's best to find ways to save energy and money with
cheaper ideas like new low-flow showerheads, heat traps,
insulation, vent dampers, or a water heater blanket.  You
could also adjust your thermostat down as well which is
generally the cheapest way to save energy on a water
heater.  Ask a local plumbing service technician if having
these devices installed is practical for your situation.

Maintaining old equipment saves the cost of new equipment,
obviously.  If you can double or even triple the life of
your heater, you would save a bundle on not purchasing a
new heater.  The best thing to do is to perform money
saving activities on your water heater and then with the
saved money, you can upgrade to a new system.  Upgrading to
a new system such as a tankless system could save you even
more energy and money on you electrical bill or gas bill.
Also upgrading to an extremely efficient solar water
heating system could save you the energy and gas bill
almost completely, plus you'd receive a nice big tax credit
on your income tax for the year.

In order to figure out the cost of a new water heater
compared with keeping the old one we have to run the cost
cycle analysis.  A cost cycle consists of operating costs,
fuel costs, lifetime potential, inflationary costs and
purchase price.

To figure out the cost cycle you need the:

Purchase price
Cost of energy or your utility bill

The yearly energy cost to use the appliance which can be
found on the EnergyGuide label.  The energy guide label is
located directly on the water heater and is supposed to be
positioned so that it can be easily seen.  It's not
supposed to be facing the wall, but this does happen in the
installation infrequently.

The estimated life of the appliance.  For electric and gas
water heaters that should be on average 13 years.

A discount factor which is adjusted for inflation.  The
discount factor is 0.83 for both an electric and a gas
water heater.

The formula is as follows:  Purchase price + Yearly energy
cost + Estimated Lifetime x Discount number (0.83) = Cost
cycle

This information is provided by the ACEEE (American Council
for an Energy Efficient Economy)


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water heaters (they're the ultimate in energy efficiency),
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