Your water heater is one of the most used appliances in your home, so it’s important to consider your options carefully before choosing a new one. In addition to details like the brand and the type, you’ll also need to select a water heater that’s the right size. Residential water heaters typically range from around 30 gallons to 75 gallons in size, so you have a lot of sizes to pick from.
Quick Tips for Selecting a Water Heater Size
Water heater sizes are usually measured in gallons. This metric describes the size of the tank that holds your preheated water. There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a water heater size, but it doesn’t take a lot of work to get a unit that’s roughly the right size. Here are some basics you’ll need to consider if you want to get a new water heater that’s likely to work for you.
Choose a Unit Based on Your Household Size
The first thing you should do is think about how many people will be using your water heater. Add up how many people live in your house and will be using hot water. If you have very frequent visitors who also use hot water, make sure to include them in your total too. Once you have this number, the typical recommendation for tank size is:
- Two people: 30 gallons
- Three people: 40 gallons
- Four people: 40 gallons
- Five people: 50 gallons
- Six people: 60 gallons
- Seven or more people: 75 gallons
Fine-tune Based on Your Number of Bathrooms
The number of people using your water heater is one of the most important metrics to consider, but you also want to think about the number of bathrooms you have. Analyzing this will ensure that your water heater has enough capacity to handle multiple showers or other fixtures running at once.
The rule of thumb is to count every bathroom beyond the first one. Then, you should add another 3.5 gallons of tank capacity to your estimated size for each additional bathroom. For example, if you have a three-bathroom home, you’ll need an extra 7 gallons of water heater capacity.
Plan for the Future
The average water heater lasts around 10 to 15 years, so consider your future while making your choice. For example, you might currently be a single person who doesn’t need a large water heater tank. However, if you plan on selling your home in the next year, you might want to get a tank that would suit a typical family of three to four people.
On the other hand, if you bought a home with a large water heater but you only have two or three people living in your home, you can replace your large water heater with a smaller model. If you aren’t quite sure about what your future holds, it’s useful to know that a 40-gallon to 50-gallon heater is a versatile size that suits a variety of households.
Make Sure to Consider Your Personal Hot Water Usage
Every home and family is different, so there’s no guarantee that something that works for others will work for you. In addition to looking at the basic structure of your family and home, you also need to think about how you use water. For example, if you have a massive bathtub that you want to fill up with hot water at the end of each day, you might need a slightly bigger water heater than a person who just takes a five-minute shower.
The most common thing homeowners will need to think about is whether they take unusually long or short showers. However, there are a variety of home appliances that can also increase your hot water usage. Consider things like washers, dishwashers, and bidets. If you have a lot of appliances that use hot water, you might want to increase your hot water size by around 5 gallons.
You’ll also need to consider the timing of your hot water usage. If everyone in your house takes showers one after the other, a bigger tank can be useful. Likewise, those who come home from work and want to run all their appliances at once might need a larger tank. If you think your household tends to use a lot of hot water at once, make sure to check the tank’s first-hour rating. This measurement combines tank size and functionality to tell you how much hot water a tank can produce in an hour.
Think About Your Home’s Energy Needs
While your comfort and convenience are certainly the most important factors for selecting a water heater, some homeowners also want to consider energy usage. Different sizes of tanks consume different amounts of energy. Larger water heaters are more efficient to run. They use less energy to hold water at a certain temperature instead of heating water to that temperature. Therefore, big tanks that heat water less frequently can use less energy per gallon of hot water.
For some people, the energy savings might be worth rethinking their water heater usage. If you’re very concerned about efficiency, getting a larger tank and having your entire household use hot water at one point in the day can result in small savings. However, there are also a lot of other very reliable ways to save energy, such as insulating your tank or getting a high-efficiency heater, so you probably will not want to make your sizing decision entirely based on energy usage.
Remember That Tankless Water Heater Sizes Work Differently
Keep in mind that most discussions about water heater size focus on traditional water heaters with tanks. While this is still the most common type of water heater, you should also consider the pros and cons of tankless heaters. These heaters warm water on demand instead of storing it in a big tank, so their sizing doesn’t focus on gallons. Instead of measuring size based on tank capacity, tankless water heaters are sized based on flow rate and heating ability.
For a very precise size estimate, you’ll need to add up the flow rate demands of each appliance in your house, consider how many fixtures you use at once, and find the right tankless water heater size in gallons per minute. (GPM). If you want a more casual estimate, it’s useful to know that the average residential household uses a tankless water heater with a size of somewhere between 5 GPM and 10 GPM. Bigger households are more likely to use above 8 GPM while smaller ones often use around a 6 GPM machine.
If you would like a more personal recommendation, turn to Plumbing & Cooling Nerds. Our team of experts is happy to assess your home and let you know what size water heater would work for your needs. We also help Southwest Florida residents with a variety of other home services including heating, cooling, and sewers. Contact Plumbing & Cooling Nerds to learn more.
