Water Heater Installation in Anchorage, AK
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What a tank faces here
Your house needs heat 12 months a year here, with winter nights averaging 10°F from December through February. A water heater in a house like that is working year round, with no stretch of warm weather to ease the load.
Power loss is worth planning for. In 2024, 21% of households in Alaska went at least 24 hours without power. A gas water heater with a standing pilot keeps making hot water through an outage since it draws no electricity to run. An electric model will not, and needs the power back on first.
The federal efficiency minimum for a new storage water heater is not one number. It is set by a formula tied to the tank's rated volume, applied differently across draw patterns, so the minimum that applies depends on the size of the tank going in.
- 10°F
- the average winter night, and colder incoming water means longer heating
- 21%
- of Alaska households lost power for a day or more in 2024, and a heater with an electric element or electric ignition stops without it
NOAA 1991–2020 monthly normals
A gas water heater would save about $1,080 a year to run in Alaska compared with an electric water heater.
Estimates for a typical Alaska home, from EIA household energy data and Alaska fuel prices. Your home will differ.
- How do I know it's time to replace my water heater?
- The clearest sign is water pooling around the base of the tank. That means it's leaking from the inside, and a leaking tank does not get repaired, it gets replaced. Other signs are water that isn't as hot as it used to be, a tank that's rumbling or popping, and rusty water coming from the hot tap only. If your water heater is more than ten years old and showing any of these, get it looked at rather than waiting for it to fail. A tank that fails outright will fail with a house full of water on the floor.
- Should I switch to a tankless water heater?
- It depends on what you want out of it, not on where you live. A tankless unit heats water as it flows through rather than storing it, so you get hot water for as long as you run the tap instead of running out partway through a shower. It also takes up much less space than a tank. The tradeoff is that a tankless unit needs a gas line and venting sized for it, and if your home is set up for a tank, switching means changing that setup too. A contractor can look at your gas line, venting and how much hot water your household actually uses and tell you whether the switch makes sense for your house.
- What changes when you install a tankless water heater?
- The biggest change is what's on the wall. A tankless unit mounts on the wall rather than sitting on the floor, so it frees up the space a tank used to take. Behind that, the gas line often needs to be a larger diameter than what fed the tank, because a tankless unit draws more gas at once to heat water on demand. The venting is different too, usually a smaller pipe run to the outside rather than the wide flue a tank used. None of this is a reason not to do it, it's just work a contractor plans for before the old tank comes out.