Types of water heaters and methods of their installation
An electric water heater will provide advanced gardeners with hot water during the summer season. Owners of private houses, which have single-circuit boilers of old design or traditional stove heating, will be able to take a warm bath and shower, get the metropolitan level of comfort with the help of a heater. It will help the townspeople to safely survive the period of annual shutdown of hot water supply. Here are recommendations on how to connect a water heater in an apartment, house, or country house.
Types of water heaters
There are two types of domestic water heaters
The flow water heater is structurally simple, compact and relatively inexpensive. The heat exchanger is small, it is a narrow tube. Around it is a heating element that heats the water in a matter of seconds. The “protochnik” gives out warm water immediately after the tap opens, it can maintain the required temperature for a long time. However, in order to have instant water heating, it is necessary to use high-power heating elements. For a washbasin, 5 kW is enough, a shower will require 15 kW. In order to provide several points with warm water, even more electrical power will be required. Not every electrical network corresponds to such parameters. Most flow heaters are designed to serve only one tap.
A storage water heater (boiler) has a large well-insulated heat exchanger (accumulator or tank) with a volume of 10-200 liters. The heating element is built inside, has a low power from 1 to 3 kW. The incoming cold water is heated gradually over several hours. The thermostat maintains the water temperature within 30-85C. The main advantage of the boiler is that a conventional socket with a grounding current of 16 A is sufficient for its operation. The storage heater is much larger in size than the flow heater, technically more complicated and more expensive. As hot water is used up, it is replaced by cold water. With constant analysis, hot water will dry up, it will take time until the cold one heats up.
Storage heaters can be made in closed (pressure) and open (non-pressure) form. Closed are hermetic, universal, can supply several mixers with warm water. Open ones communicate with the atmosphere, collapsible fittings supply the required amount of water to such a device, blocking the pressure of the water supply at the inlet. From the tank, warm water flows by gravity to the tap, cold water to which is not connected. The heat exchanger of an open water heater is not subjected to increased pressure, and is often made of plastic. The heat exchanger body has a removable cover, easy to maintain. Accordingly, the entire open heater is significantly cheaper than the closed one. An open-type boiler is able to provide only one mixer with warm water, the water pressure in which will be low.
Select
An open water heater is not applicable in an apartment or a country house. It is suitable only for a summer residence, the owners of which will be satisfied with the presence of warm water in only one washbasin. But it can be operated without connecting to the water supply, it is easy to drain for the winter.
A flow-through heater with a power of up to 12 kW is not able to serve several points of water intake at the same time and has its own mixer (faucet, shower head or a combination of them) that is not connected to cold water. A more powerful device with automatic control can be built into the hot water supply system, supplying the entire apartment with warm water. True, at a cost it will not be cheaper than the cumulative one. Despite the obvious advantages (compactness, low cost, efficiency), "throughputs" can be installed in few places due to the lack of appropriate electrical networks.
The storage heater was originally designed for installation in a hot water supply network to work with several consumers. It does not limit the flow rate of hot water, it can be installed at a great distance from consumers in a place protected from moisture. With certain disadvantages (large dimensions and slow water heating), boilers are the most common type of electric water heater in an apartment, cottage or office. As for the volume of the heat exchanger, ten liters are enough for the washbasin. A 100-liter boiler will allow a family of three to comfortably take a shower, wash and wash dishes in the kitchen in the morning and evening.
Connection diagram
In the case when the installation of a flow-type water heater or an open storage water heater is carried out in a country house or in an apartment for one consumer, the scheme is simple: the device is mounted on the cold water line directly in front of the tap - say the masters from the company fix-master.kiev.ua, who have been installing boilers for many years.
Connecting a boiler is more difficult
In a residential building where the heater is the only source of hot water, cold pipes