Water Heater Installation in Fort Morgan, CO
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A water heater here works eight months of cold a year
Water heaters in Morgan County run hard from October through May, with winter nights averaging 16°F. Cold ground water means the tank has to work harder to bring it up to temperature, and it does that for eight months of the year.
Power is part of the picture too. Statewide, 13% of households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024, and this county has seen 10 winter storms and 55 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A gas water heater with a standing pilot keeps working through an outage. One with electric ignition does not, and needs power to restart once it's back. Whatever you install, it has to meet the federal minimum efficiency for its size and type, since the standard is set by tank volume and draw pattern, not one number for every heater.
- 16°F
- the average winter night, and colder incoming water means longer heating
- 8 months
- October through May, the months homes here need heat
- 13%
- of Colorado 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 $370 a year to run in Colorado compared with an electric water heater.
Estimates for a typical Colorado home, from EIA household energy data and Colorado fuel prices. Your home will differ.
- How do I know it's time to replace my water heater?
- If it's leaking at the tank itself, replace it. That's not a part you fix. Age is the other sign worth watching. Most tank water heaters have a working life of somewhere around a decade, and past that point the tank is more likely to rust through than to keep sealing. Rusty or metallic-smelling hot water, a tank that's noisy from sediment buildup, or a pilot or igniter that keeps failing are all worth having a contractor look at. If the water heater fails in the middle of winter here, you're without hot water until it's replaced, so it's worth acting on the warning signs before that happens.
- Should I switch to a tankless water heater?
- It depends on what you want out of it, not on whether tankless is better in general. A tankless unit heats water on demand instead of storing it, so it doesn't run out of hot water the way a tank can, and it doesn't sit there heating a full tank of water you're not using. It also takes a different gas line and venting setup than a tank does, which is why swapping one in for the other is a bigger job than a straight replacement. A contractor can tell you whether your gas line and venting can support one, or what it would take to get there.
- What changes when you install a tankless water heater?
- The biggest change is that a tankless unit needs a larger gas line than most tank water heaters use, because it has to heat water fast enough to keep up with a running faucet or shower instead of drawing from a tank that's already hot. It also vents differently, usually through a dedicated vent rather than sharing one. Both of those can mean new gas piping and new venting run to wherever the unit goes. None of this is a sign the old setup was wrong, tank and tankless units are just built around different ways of delivering hot water. A contractor can walk the house and say what's needed for yours.