{"id":95,"date":"2007-08-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/hot-water-needs"},"modified":"2007-08-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-25T00:00:00","slug":"hot-water-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/consumer-guides\/hot-water-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Water Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Hot water needs<\/strong>: In general, your hot water needs can be measured by the number of bathrooms in your house. The smallest size unit for a one-bathroom house should be 30 or 40 gallons, in either gas or electric. For a 1 1\/2-bath house, 40 gallons is minimum. For a 2- to 3 1\/2-bath house, choose a 50-gallon gas heater or a 66- to 80-gallon electric one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Electric considerations<\/strong>: Electric water heaters take longer to heat water, so large tanks should be bigger than their gas-fired counterparts. For a large, four-bath house or a home with an extra-large bathtub, get a 75-gallon gas heater or a 120-gallon electric heater. Some circumstances can skew these standards for example, a laundry-heavy family with small children or a house with an especially large bathtub will mean much higher hot water use than normal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metrics<\/strong>: A typical load of laundry uses 22 gallons of mixed water. The amount of hot water depends on the temperature you choose.<\/p>\n<p>A typical bath uses 43 gallons of mixed water. The amount of hot water depends on the temperature you choose.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Heater sizes<\/strong>: Water heaters come in three basic sizes for homes 30-, 40- and 50-gallon units although you can find larger ones if necessary. You can find out how large your current tank is by looking at the nameplate. A good rule of thumb is that you can usually replace your old one with a new one of the same capacity unless you&#8217;ve recently added a bathroom, dishwasher or washer or are planning a new addition or appliances in the near future. You might also want to take advantage of the newer, more energy-efficient models.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gas vs. electric<\/strong>: In general, gas water heaters win the battle. A water heater&#8217;s capacity is a result of two factors: storage and recovery time (how quickly it can heat a tankful of water). With recovery, both gas and electric water heaters are rated by the number of gallons of water they can raise to 90 degrees F in one hour.<\/p>\n<p>For example, a 40-gallon gas heater rated at 40,000 BTU can &#8220;recover&#8221; more than its entire capacity (41 gallons) in one hour. A similar capacity electric heater running at 240 volts will only heat half of its capacity (20 gallons) in an hour. Propane heaters are most often found in rural areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hot water needs: In general, your hot water needs can be measured by the number of bathrooms in your house. The smallest size unit for a one-bathroom house should be 30 or 40 gallons, in either gas or electric. For a 1 1\/2-bath house, 40 gallons is minimum. For a 2- to 3 1\/2-bath house, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-guides","category-plumbing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}