Hot Water Heaters In Series Or Parallel

Series piping the outlet of one heater into the inlet of the next.

Hot water heaters in series or parallel. Whats the pros and cons. When installing water heaters in series the heater with the largest input btu or kw should be the first heater in the series at the cold water inlet side of the system. As hot water is drawn it is taken from the last heater in the series. As well as lengths of pipe.

By putting a water heater in between the cold supply and the other hot water heater you can warm the cold water first so that the final water heater need only heat up already warm water. I too prefer series over a parallel connection. This series scenario could potentially be setup where you would never run out of hot water while only paying for the energy to warm the water of the upstream tank and only paying for the energy to. Parallel will deliver more hot water than the same heaters connected in series.

Water will be drawn off of both water heaters so you will get about 80 gallons of hot water out of 2 50 gallon water heaters the would still be hot hopefully. Geo thermal installer will run dispersion hot water thru tanks. Another important point of parallel. What do you guys think.

Simply stated 2 water heaters installed in series means cold water enters the first heater often referred to as upstream and travels through the second heater referred to as downstream on it s way to the demand point. Series piping definitions parallel equally manifolding the inlet water pipe and outlet water pipe in multiple heater installations. Should i install single 85 gallon hot water heater 2 50 gallon in series or 2 50 gallon in parallel. Now scenario 2 i would do series but i would use the first tank as a warming tank in other words as the second water heater uses the hot water it will pull in the water that is pre heated from the first tank so it will take less time to.

Parallel water heaters diagram are fed supply water from a tee equal incoming and delivered to the demand source via a tee equal outgoing. Piping in series can cause the first heater to fail sooner than the second. Typically set the inlet heater to 100 and the outlet heater to 130 135. Having equal number of fittings.

In a parallel configuration the hot water demand is taken equally from each unit. This way both heater have approx the same 30 35 degree rise. For every gallon of hot water drawn from each unit one gallon of cold water is introduced into the water heater. Series installation draws hot water from one tank at a time.

A simple fix if 1 heater takes a dump and no big deal if the first inlet heater is just a storage tank if the unit doesn t stay lit.