Like hybrid vehicles that combine the best of both gas and electric engines, and provide real benefits to their owners, hybrid water heaters can offer real benefits to their users as well. While the “hybrid” methods used in these water heaters don’t use gas and electric combinations like the vehicles do, they can provide big savings and other benefits for their owners.

A hybrid water heater provides the best traits of a tankless water heater without most of their drawbacks. This includes:

• Huge supply of hot water
• Great energy efficiency

In fact, unlike tankless water heaters, hybrid water heaters:

• Work in a power outage (except power vent models)
• Have no additional wait time for hot water
• Do not have issues with flow rate
• Can be used with recirculation pumps for even faster response time
• Usually don’t require expensive gas piping, venting, or gas meter/supply line upgrades
• Fit the same footprint as most 40-gallon traditional tanks

This hybrid approach to water heating is a “best of both worlds” scenario for a consumer’s needs.

Similar to the traditional tank-type water heaters, hybrid water heaters maintain heat and water pressure in a tank (though this tank is much smaller than the traditional tanks). And, like the tankless water heaters on the market today, these systems offer high output of hot water in an energy-efficient manner. The tank on the average hybrid water heater system can be ½ the size or less of a normal hot water tank. These small tanks allow hybrids to temper incoming cold water. Therefore, they only have to increase water temperature from warm to hot as opposed to tankless which has to raise completely cold water to hot.

While comparisons of tankless vs. tank water heaters have seen mixed reviews from some organizations, it’s quite apparent that hybrid water heaters are undoubtedly more efficient systems. In fact, overall efficiency for these systems averages around 86% - as compared to 80% and 60% efficiency averages for tankless and tank water heaters, respectively.

For more general information on the efficiency and benefits of a hybrid water heater, head over to the Bel Red page dedicated to these systems. For product specifics and more detailed information, check out our fact sheet or data sheet on our hybrid water heaters. If you’re interested in exploring the installation of a hybrid water heater, you can contact us today.