Although the original
water heater was a 75 gallon gas water heater, the customer was running out of
hot water with all of the demands of the household. A 100 gallon gas water
heater was an option, but access prevented this installation. The other option
was to install two 50 gallon gas water heaters that were plumbed in parallel.
Twin water heater installations can be plumbed in series or in parallel.
A series installation has cold water going into one tank, being heated and then
going into the second tank for storage. The second tank will fire to keep the
hot water to the required temperature, but the first tank does the majority of
the work over the life of this type of installation and hence will fail first.
A parallel system has hot water being drawn equally from both tanks at
the same time if plumbed correctly. The advantage with this installation is
maximizing the life of both water heaters.
Another advantage to a twin
system installation is that if one water heater starts to leak, it can be
isolated and drained down while the other is still operating.
With this
installation, both water heaters were placed in drain pans with discharge lines
going to the sump pit. This will prevent flooding the finished basement whenever
the water heaters do fail and start to leak.
|