What are the pros/cons of a gas vs electric hot water heater?
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Anonymous
| I've read a few articles on the advantages/disadvantages of both (this is for a water heater with a tank, 50 gallons). But IRL, what have you found to be the pros and cons of each? |
Anonymous
| Big pro of my gas water heater is that I have hot water when I lose power. |
Anonymous
|
Gas is cheaper to operate on a day to day basis, and heats the water faster.
Electric last longer, because they have fewer moving parts. But if you have a gas installed now, you should install gas. If you have electric installed now, install another electric. Don't overthink it. |
Anonymous
|
I'd say there are five options to look at, each with pros and cons: Tank, conventional electric. Tank, heat pump electric Tank, gas Tankless, conventional electric Tankless, gas Traditionally the trade-off was that gas is cheaper to run and electric is cheaper to install. The new heat pump water heaters are cheaper to run than gas. They are initially more expensive, whether they are more expensive to install than gas depends a lot upon what your house looks like. If you have radiator heat you can also look at heating off your boiler but that's not big around here. |
Anonymous
| Gas, its cheaper and always there, NEVER tankless electric you won't have enough hot water and if the power goes out you won't have hot water. NOPE. They're useless. |
Anonymous
| Elec is better for the environment. |
Anonymous
What is "the environment". Please define. Also, if someone, anyone, declares that something is for "the environment" environment, does that mean I need automatically follow what you are saying and do what you say? Are these magic words? Yes sir, you mentioned the "environment" so I now do what you want, not what I want. |
Anonymous
That’s an inaccurate statement, and I am engineer for an electric utility. |
Anonymous
This. We lost power for days on end during snow storms & derecho, our street felt like the last street to get power and get ploughed. At least we had hot water. |
Anonymous
|
Electric appliances don't emit greenhouse gasses.
And if you're thinking electric appliances use coal generated electricity, it's easier to clean up 100,000 fossil fuel power plants than 100,000,000 gas powered devices. If you're buying new, get electric. if not for you, for your kids and grandkids. |
Anonymous
You sound unhinged PP. when the the poster said better for the environment, they meant that electric heaters have lower carbon emissions and lower NO2 emissions. |
Anonymous
The Gas Lobby is strong in this one! |
Anonymous
| Gas- get it while it's still legal. |
Anonymous
Right - so you are employed by a company that to make money sells a product that is bad for the environment. So I don't think your employment makes you an unbiased source. |
Anonymous
This - if you care about the planet you need to replace every thing you own that runs on gas and replace it with electric. It is true that in the US currently about 60% of our electricity is carbon based but that is rapidly changing and 100% of the power for a gas hot water heater or furnace or car is carbon based. In our house we've weaned ourselves from 3 of the 5 things that ran on gas and to tie in with this thread we are getting rid of our 12 year old gas hot water heater this winter and replacing it with an electric heat pump that should use about one-third as much energy as the model it replaced. And even with running 3 appliances (one is our car) on electric that used to run on gas we are getting about 75% of our home's electricity from our solar panels - our gas and electric bills have dropped by about $1500 a year since we installed solar and started getting rid of gas appliances and are saving another $1000 a year that we used to spend at the pump. |