There are several parts to a gas fired water heater’s temperature control system. On some models they are all integrated into one unit called a combination gas valve, on others they are in separate units throughout the water heater. Gas water heaters use heat from a gas burner flame, transmitted by conduction through the bottom of the tank, to bring household water up to usable temperatures and maintain it there. Doing so in the safest and most energy efficient orderly manner is the work of the control system. The components of the system are listed and described briefly below.

A properly installed relief valve on a hot water heater will allow excessively pressurized and heated water to be released from the tank. The safety relief valve can prevent excessive temperature, pressure or both. Under certain conditions, the tank in a hot water heater can explode.

Water heater tank explosions can be violent enough to cause severe property damage, injury and even loss of life. Such explosions are usually caused by either mechanical defects in the tank such as corrosion or age-related deterioration, or water in the tank being too high of a temperature.

While tankless water heaters have been used in Europe for many years now, they are a fairly new concept to most Americans. The whole house tankless water heater is rapidly gaining popularity with home owners because they are more efficient than the much larger tank variety of water heaters.

The cost of a whole house tankless water heater varies considerably according to size, type of fuel used and brand. They generally range from $500 for an electric tankless water heater that will supply a 1 to 2 bathroom house with hot water, to over $4,000 for a whole house unit to supply a large multiple bathroom home.

The dawn of the 21st Century has brought with it a huge number of technological advances that are designed to make life so much easier and yet so much safer at the same time. Many of the innovations have not achieved what they set out to do but there are huge numbers of new devices that have taken an old idea and just updated them for convenience and safety.

For example, if you like to leave your air conditioning on all day while you are at work, set up your digital timer so that it will turn off 10 minutes after you leave the house and turn back on 30 minutes before you get home. The savings on your energy bills will likely pay for the digital timer in no time.

Other Uses

A salt free water softener system will do exactly as it says - soften your water without having to pass it through salts. Salt free water softeners work by preventing the hard scale that sticks to, and can be so destructive toward pipes, valves and other water system components. They do this by changing the dissolved ‘hard’ minerals in the water into harmless and inert, or inactive, soft scale particles.

These softer particles will remain in the water, but are suspended in it rather than dissolved, meaning that they will harmlessly pass through the water system and down the drain - without involving any ecologically damaging and harmful caustic salts.