Questions About Tankless Water Heaters, Part 2

This second conversation with Noritz service technician lead Desiree Lovelady addresses warranties, maintenance, and fuel-cost savings.

Attracted to the energy efficiency and fuel-bill savings of tankless water heaters, more North American homeowners are making the switch to this technology. Tankless allows homeowners and their families to enjoy as much hot water as they want whenever they want it, while also saving energy by not needlessly heating and reheating that water when they don’t want it.

To obtain a deeper understanding of tankless water heaters and their benefits, we asked service technician lead Desiree Lovelady to address several of the common questions she hears from professional and consumer customers alike.

Q: How long is the warranty for Noritz tankless heaters?

Desiree Lovelady (DL): We have different versions of the warranty for our water heaters. For our residential units, the warranty on the heat exchanger has historically been 12 years, plus five years on other parts.

However, earlier this year, we introduced a 25-year warranty on the dual stainless-steel heat exchangers used by our EZ Series of residential condensing tankless water heaters. All four models in the series have a Uniform Energy Factor (UEF) of 0.96, and all are specially made for tank water heater replacement applications. This new warranty is a full decade longer than the longest warranty currently on the residential market and more than double Noritz’s previous warranty on these four products.

Because commercial units are engineered to run three times harder than a water heater inside a home, their warranties are necessarily shorter. But our newest commercial water heater, the NCC199CDV — with an energy rating of 98 percent — offers a full 10 years of protection on its heat-exchanger. It is one of the longest warranties in the commercial water heating business.

Q: Is maintenance necessary for tankless water heaters?

DL: Yes, it is — if you want to maintain your water heater’s high efficiency and therefore its ability to save you money on energy costs. We normally recommend an annual descaling of our residential units, just in case there are any issues with hard water in the home. The severity of such conditions, of course, varies by geography.

The interior of the water heater should also receive maintenance throughout the year. If dust or debris gets in the machine, it can cause numerous combustion issues. You can resolve this by using an air compressor to blow air into the interior of the unit. It’s not that difficult, and it will help maintain high performance, which is why you would purchase a tankless water heater in the first place.

Q: How can you have hot water moving only to certain fixtures in a home — that is, hot water for one bathroom, but not another?

DL: This issue usually involves a problem somewhere in the hot-water supply line in a home. Tankless water heaters have no sense of where they are moving hot water to once activated. The unit is simply looking for demand and turns on to meet that demand for hot-water flow once it finds it.

Sometimes a home can have an obstruction issue, such as a cross connection or blockage in the hot-water line to a fixture. Either can interfere with water being delivered where the homeowner needs it.

Q: How much money can a homeowner expect to save by replacing her storage-tank water heater with a tankless unit?

DL: Water heaters can account for at least one fourth of all energy consumption in a typical American household. Since a tankless water heater operates — and consumes natural or liquid propane gas — only when you need hot water, it can reduce energy consumption substantially. A Noritz tankless water heater could cut monthly fuel bills for water heating in half.

To learn more about other common questions for Noritz tankless water heater, please visit our FAQ page here: https://www.noritz.com/about-noritz/faqs/

Learn more about the products offered by Noritz by clicking here: https://www.noritz.com/products/