Edmonton Plumbing | The Truth About Tankless Water Heaters
Hey everybody, we’re back at Waterman Mechanical’s YouTube channel. This is Scott—he’s from Waterman Mechanical – the Edmonton plumbing expert! And today we’re going to be talking about tankless water heaters. Are they worth it for Edmonton homes? Are you still waiting for a water heater in the morning? It might be time to rethink your water-heating system.
Steve Jobs says, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Here’s a fun statistic for you guys: in 2025, 35% of Canadian homeowners have transitioned to a tankless water heater, citing energy efficiency and continuous hot-water supply as primary reasons.
All right, Scott, we’re going to jump into some of these questions for you, okay? Are you ready?
Scott: Yes sir.
What Is the Difference Between Tankless and Traditional Water Heaters?
Trevor: All right—number one: what are the main differences between tankless and traditional water heaters?
Good question, Trevor, get asked that quite a bit, and the thing I tell most homeowners is that the biggest difference you’re going to find is with a tankless hot-water heater you don’t run out of hot water ever. The only thing that happens is you can start using too much water—so, too much flow you’re trying to pull out of too many taps or your laundry, dishwasher, all that stuff—and so what happens is the flow rate actually ramps down on a tankless hot-water heater. You’ll never run out of the hot water, but you’re just going to get less flow out of each fixture because it just can’t keep up; it only has so much firepower.
Okay, so if you’re, you know, having all the taps open at the same time, there’s just going to be less flow coming from there.
That’s right. They’ll all have hot water for as long as you want, but it’ll just be a lot less flow.
Got it. So you can have one shower after another the whole day, all week, all month, but you cannot have, let’s say, possibly five showers. Now obviously it depends on your flow rates of your shower heads and the size of your tankless hot-water heater, so—and then we can also install two on a cascade system, and then you get hot water forever. We’ve done that in a couple of the larger homes in Edmonton, and it works excellent.
Does Edmonton’s Climate Impact Tankless Systems?
There you go, so that’s something I never heard about before—that cascading system, that’s great. How does Edmonton’s climate impact the performance of a tankless system?
As far as I know, the climate doesn’t really impact it whatsoever. The only thing that might happen the odd time is, if it’s not vented properly, then you can get some ice damming in the vents, but usually, if the venting is done properly, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Okay, so explain ice damming in the vents for people like me that aren’t plumbers and people, you know, online.
Sure. What does that mean? So basically, ice damming is like just ice blocking up the vent.
And why is that bad?
Well, it can’t—if something can’t breathe, you know, as a human, if you can’t breathe, you’re you’re done. So anything that requires combustion air—like a hot-water heater, furnace, hot-water tank, same type of thing—basically it needs air in and air out to actually, you know, com—to you for combustion, and yeah, if the piping is graded poorly, then you can get some ice buildup in the piping.
Okay, so we always have to make sure that the piping is graded back towards the machine.
Okay, so let’s compare a regular hot-water tank—so a big tank that, you know, you fill up—and a tankless system. Okay, what are the price differences between those two?
Tankless Water Heaters Need a Gas Line
So, tankless system that you burn a lot more gas—sorry, I shouldn’t say burn more gas over time, but you burn a lot more gas quicker. So right away, the firepower ramps up and so you’ve got to burn all that, like you’ve got to heat all that water really quickly on demand, right? So basically what happens—the biggest cost is probably the gas line running to the tankless hot-water heater. A lot of newer homes, the home builders will build on a tighter budget, tighter schedule, and so the gas lines going in are they’re costed out more efficiently, so we sometimes have to run a separate gas line from the gas meter to your new on-demand system.
Okay, and the systems themselves—I mean, I guess it’s tough to to say, but they’re they’re a little bit more, but they do—they last longer than than a tank.
So they can last a little bit longer than a tank and, you know, we get really good customer service and good technical support from the U providers that we have, and so we can easily maintain them and service them quite quickly. Yeah, so I would say that they they do last a very long time. A few years ago they it wasn’t like that, but now they’ve worked a lot of the kinks out ’cause they’re a lot more common.
Tankless Water Heaters Last a Long Time
Okay, and when it comes to maintenance—I guess if you properly maintain it, it should last a really long time.
Yeah, so basically the heat exchanger is the biggest problem; you just need to make sure that you’re cleaning that out, flushing it, so we can provide that service for you. The manufacturer recommends every year that we come and we flush out the system—it takes about an hour to get that all done—and yeah, works quite well.
Right on. See a big difference from that. Cool.
Installing Tankless Water Heaters in Old Homes
Now, can existing homes easily retrofit to accommodate tankless units?
If you want to retrofit to a tankless unit, yeah, we don’t normally have a problem with that, especially in older homes even, Trevor, ’cause like I said before, older homes, the gas lines are usually sized a little bit more robust, and so then we can actually just tag onto that gas line or cut into it midway in the mechanical room and run a new gas line to your unit—that’s usually the biggest headache with installing a on-demand system.
Are there any government incentives or rebates for installing a tankless system in your home?
So there are some government programs, and the first step to that is giving us a call and seeing if they’re still in existence, ’cause sometimes the government brings these in and out of play. There was something called the Greener Homes Grant, and that was for energy-efficient appliances. Now the only stipulation to that is you do have to get a home-energy audit completed first. Our company doesn’t do that, but we can definitely put you in touch with companies that do—we work quite closely with them, so we’re happy to do that.
So there’s there’s possibilities out there.
There is, yeah.
Hard Water Affects Tankless Water Heaters
Now, let’s talk about water quality. How does water quality in Edmonton affect the longevity of a tankless system?
It’d be the same as any type of water heater. Now obviously, water hardness in Edmonton is—can be—an issue, so a lot of clients, they either get a filter or an inline filter or a water softener installed before, or upstream we call it, from the water heater, and that can prolong the life of and the longevity of your water heater by quite a bit.
Okay, yeah, I was going to ask that; if a water softener does help with long—it does, yeah. And a water softener actually helps with all your fixtures in the home—all the water hardness—so your aerators in your faucets, the shower heads, the cartridges in your faucets, all that kind of stuff.
Okay, and do you guys install water softeners?
We do—we supply and install.
What Is The Best Brand of Tankless Water Heaters?
Perfect. Now, next question: as far as brands, are there any brands in particular that you supply for tankless hot-water systems?
Yeah, we do—we have a couple of different brands. Our favorite brand to install is Navien, so it’s a Navien on-demand system. They also make boilers; they just came out with a new furnace—so really, really interesting stuff. Their office is right in Edmonton, so we get really good pricing, we get really good tech support; we’ve even have had their rep come out to a job site or two to help us out with some larger projects, and we’ve done training in-house with them, so we know them quite well.
Fantastic. Let’s talk about the installation process. So how long does it take to install one of these systems?
So, if—like I’ve talked about those gas lines—you know, if we have to install an extra gas line for your on-demand system, then that might take about a day with the permitting process and inspection process, everything like that, and we can come back usually within the next couple of days and install your system, and usually an on-demand system, if we send over two guys, it should only take a day.
Oh, that’s really good—so similar to like switching out your tank.
Exactly—pretty similar, and we make sure that you have hot water by the end of the day.
Call Watermen Mechanical for a Water Heater Upgrade!
Perfect. So, have you received any feedback from customers after they’ve gotten a tankless system—like good or bad?
So the biggest feedback that we used to get was that the water takes a little bit longer—the hot water takes longer to get to the fixture that the client is using. So actually, the Navien has come out with a little reservoir tank inside—it’s just about one gallon—and so it heat—it preheats some water for you, and so when you’re ready to put the call out for hot water, it comes right away. So we don’t really have many complaints about them anymore, Trevor.
That is awesome, great. So, if somebody in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Spruce Grove—anywhere in Edmonton—is looking for a tankless hot-water system, what do they have to do?
Call Waterman Mechanical, the Edmonton plumbing experts!
All right, perfect. Visit the website www.watermenmechanical.ca and check them out. Get a free quote; they’ll be happy to come out and service you, and until then we’ll catch you on the next video.
Thanks, Trevor.