Instant and consistent hot showers/baths have been one of the hallmarks of a satisfactory experience for most hotel guests. A satisfactory hot shower entails a constant stream of water that is hot enough, consistently maintains the desired temperature and is instantly available. Senior VP of Operations and New Openings at Hilton, Randy Gaines confirmed this sentiment to USA Today: “The shower experience has to be seamless, and guests should not wait more than 30 seconds to reach optimal water temperature.”
With a large number of hot water outlets that are equally important to maintain guest satisfaction for every visitor, hotels have traditionally favored large boiler tanks. Boiler tanks are perceived to be more effective at ensuring instant hot water delivery as they store a large amount of water while keeping it constantly hot. However, they are not efficient since they constantly consume large amounts of energy to keep the stored water hot all the time. However, with instant hot water being crucial, is there another choice?
There are three key factors which are crucial when it comes to selecting a water heater for hotels:
This is the number one priority when it comes to water heating for hotels. Hotels need to ensure that their guests can get hot water almost instantly. Anything more than half a minute would drastically reduce guest satisfaction, leading to negative reviews and lower consumer retention.
Hotels need to ensure that they always have hot water and most hotels are never closed. This means that any form of downtime due to repairs, maintenance needs, or breakdowns is unacceptable. If you operate a hotel, you would not want to be forced to put up a notice like the one shown on the side.
Since hotels seek higher redundancy, having water heaters that need constant maintenance is not ideal. Water heaters that constantly break down without notice and need a high list of spare parts that need to be updated regularly are not great choices for hotels. Such maintenance needs reduce redundancy.
Tankless Water Heaters for Instant Hot Water: Since tankless water heaters do not store water, their top operating principle is their ability to heat water instantly. Their capacity to heat water in a particular time frame is measured by the heating output which is commonly recorded in BTU/hr. A strong, commercial-grade tankless water heater, when sized correctly, can easily meet any hot water demand.
Tankless Water Heaters for Redundancy and Hassle-Free Maintenance: Being a newer form of water heating technology when compared to traditional tank-style water heaters, most tankless water heaters are more technologically advanced. Hence, most of them are designed with the highest operating standards in mind. However, redundancy and maintenance needs vary for every manufacturer and product. Hence, it is always wise to be fully informed about the design elements which add (or reduce) redundancy when choosing a water heater for your hotel, apart from the frequency and ease of maintaining them.
Being an innovative manufacturer of solely tankless, commercial water heaters, Intellihot’s products are designed with the end consumer’s needs in mind. When it comes to hotels, our iQ Floor series is the most popular choice due to these products’ high power. In fact, our iQ3001, iQ2001 and iQ1501 are the world’s first, second, and third strongest tankless water heaters respectively.
Our products, being some of the world’s strongest tankless water heaters, are designed with the goal of providing large amounts of hot water instantly. With our strongest water heater, the iQ3001 providing 3 million BTUs/hr, Intellihot’s products are extremely capable of meeting the high hot water demands of any hotel. Moreover, the unit can be wirelessly cascaded with another one for added power.
Our heavy-duty water heaters like the iQ Floor Series have multiple stainless-steel heat exchangers, each with their dedicated control. Such a design adds incredible redundancy as a breakdown in one of the heat exchangers does not equate to the entire system being broken down, leading to virtually zero downtime. Moreover, our units are cascaded in a masterless setting. Hence, there is no downtime associated with the master water heater breaking down: something that is often observed in units that are cascaded in a master setting fashion.
Intellihot’s innovative water heaters are designed to have the bare minimum number of spare parts. This not only helps us streamline our supply chain, but it also helps our consumers reduce the frequency of maintenance due to the changing of spare parts. Moreover, our products’ touchscreen display shows the health of each spare part, allowing facility managers to order spare parts in advance so that any maintenance needed can be scheduled at a convenient time. The device’s dashboard can also be accessed remotely from anywhere using our telliCare app.
Understanding the right size of tankless water heater for your hotel can be complicated if you do not possess some technical knowledge, similar to tank-styled heaters. You would want to avoid a tankless water heater that cannot handle your specific load. On the other hand, purchasing a water heater that is significantly more powerful would result in excess costs and wasted space since more powerful water heaters tend to take up more space.
You can use our water heater sizing calculator to get an accurate snapshot of your hot water requirements. You will get an instant, personalized report containing multiple options of Intellihot’s products that can serve your hotel’s needs.
All you need to do is a fill a basic form with information about your hotel’s physical space like the number of rooms, showers, and other hot water outlets. Our accurate calculator will generate a guaranteed and detailed report that is personalized to your query. If our estimates are wrong, we will pay for any additional equipment. Below are some snapshots of our detailed sizing results.
Multiple Choices
Detailed Configuration Diagrams
Accurate Specifications and Requirements
So, it is evident now that tankless water heaters have some significant advantages over their traditional tank-style counterparts. However, hotel owners and managers are often hesitant about tankless water heaters being able to meet all the hot water demands of a large hotel. Moreover, the fact that Intellihot’s tankless units are small enough to fit in a standard elevator make hotel owners doubt the power of tankless water heaters like our iQ series.
Several hotel managers who have successfully adopted tankless water heaters echo our belief that tankless water heaters are ideal for hotels. “Instantaneous water heaters provide enough hot water on demand to meet peak demand. It dramatically reduces energy, saves money and reduces our carbon footprint,” Hilton’s Senior Director of Engineering, Michael Dean told USA Today.
Let’s look at a case study which should help quell any remaining concerns.
The iconic Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel was facing constant inconvenience due to its outdated water heating system which consisted of 3 boilers and 1200 gallons of storage tanks. These units took up a lot of space, leaked constantly and needed frequent repairs.
After sizing the 790-room hotel, their old water heating systems were replaced with just two iQ1501 units. Two of these units were enough to meet the entire hotel’s hot water needs. They also resulted in increased efficiency, huge amounts of space savings, operating cost reductions, hassle-free maintenance and zero downtime.
Designed for large-volume, commercial applications, these high input units slash capital costs by up to 50%, and decrease operational costs by up to 40%
Another important facet that is important to hotels is the ability to provide hot water that is consistently hot at the set temperature. Very often, traditional water heaters cannot maintain the set temperature consistently. The outlet water temperature is observed to fluctuate constantly. This can result in reduced guest satisfaction if they have to constantly adjust their shower to continue getting hot water at their desired temperature.
Intellihot’s products employ our patented Dynamic Storage™ technology which, combined with our high-speed controller that checks temperature 20 times every second results in reliably hot water at the set temperature 99% of the time. For context, a comparable tank-style heater was shown to only maintain the set temperature 2% of the time. You can read about our study where Intellihot’s 0.5 gallon tankless water heater (Intellihot iN199) was able to outperform a commercial 100 gallon tank-style water heater here:
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