Water Heater Installation in Wilmington, DE
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What New Castle County asks of a water heater
Your water heater works through a long stretch of cold. Heat is on in Wilmington homes from October through April, seven months, and winter nights average 27°F. Incoming water is colder for that whole stretch, so the tank has more work to do turning it into hot water at the tap.
Power is part of the picture too. Delaware saw 12% of households go at least 24 hours without power in 2024, and the county has logged 11 winter storms and 228 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A gas water heater with a standing pilot keeps working through an outage. One with electronic ignition does not.
The federal minimum efficiency for a new storage water heater is not one number. It is set by a formula tied to the tank's rated volume, applied separately across four draw patterns, so two tanks of the same type but different sizes are held to different minimums.
- 27°F
- the average winter night, and colder incoming water means longer heating
- 7 months
- October through April, the months homes here need heat
- 12%
- of Delaware households lost power for a day or more in 2024, and a heater with an electric element or electric ignition stops without it
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A heat pump water heater would save about $360 a year to run in Delaware compared with an electric water heater.
Estimates for a typical Delaware home, from EIA household energy data and Delaware fuel prices. Your home will differ.
- How do I know it's time to replace my water heater?
- The clearest sign is age. Once a tank water heater is old enough that repairs keep coming up, a repair is often just a delay before the next one. Watch for water pooling at the base, since that usually means the tank itself is rusting from the inside and there's no fixing that. Rusty or metallic-smelling hot water, a tank that makes popping or rumbling sounds, or hot water that runs out faster than it used to are all signs the tank is on its way out rather than something worth patching.
- Should I switch to a tankless water heater?
- It depends on what you want out of it, not on whether tankless is better in some general sense. A tankless unit heats water on demand instead of storing it, so you don't run out of hot water partway through a shower, and it takes up far less space than a tank. It also means no standing tank of water that can leak or fail from corrosion. Against that, a tankless unit needs the right gas line or electrical circuit to run, and a contractor can tell you whether your home's setup supports one.
- What changes when you install a tankless water heater?
- The biggest change is that hot water becomes a matter of demand instead of supply. There's no tank holding water in reserve, so you're not limited by how much was heated ahead of time, but the unit does need enough gas flow or electrical capacity to heat water as it passes through. That often means changes to the gas line, venting, or wiring depending on what's already in place. It also frees up the space a tank used to take, since a tankless unit mounts on a wall rather than sitting on the floor.