Heat & Tap

What the site covers

The site is built around the step this category almost always skips, which is working out what size the house actually needs before looking at a single model. The sizing method runs in four moves: count the peak hour rather than the day, which for most houses is two or three showers and a sink between 6:30 and 8:00 in the morning; estimate the hot gallons that hour needs, at roughly 14 for a ten-minute shower, 4 to 6 for a dishwasher cycle and 40 to 50 mixed for a standard tub; then buy a unit whose first-hour rating is at or above that number rather than one whose capacity is; and for tankless, convert to simultaneous GPM and read the unit's output at your own temperature rise instead of its headline figure. The difference that makes is the site's own headline example — a 50-gallon gas tank on a 50,000 BTU burner is rated at 91 gallons in the first hour, while a 50-gallon electric resistance tank is rated at 63, the same number on the label and a 28-gallon gap behind it. From there the category hubs take over: tankless, tank, heat pump, and point-of-use and RV, each with the constraint that actually decides the project — gas supply sized for up to 199,900 BTU/h or an electric service that can carry 100 A or more for whole-house tankless, venting type for a storage swap, and for a heat pump the four physical conditions of roughly 700 cubic feet of air volume, a condensate drain, somewhere the compressor noise is tolerable and ideally an unconditioned space. A brands section reads A. O. Smith, Rheem, Bradford White, State, Navien, Rinnai, EcoSmart and Stiebel Eltron, a compare section takes the head-to-heads the category keeps asking for, and an accessories section covers the part the site says nobody else covers properly: expansion tanks, drain pans, flush kits and descalers, recirculation pumps, anode rods and leak detectors.

Picks are ranked against five published criteria in a stated order: correct sizing for the stated use case first, then published efficiency as UEF, then warranty terms taken from the manufacturer's own documentation, then repeat complaints in owner reviews, then parts and service availability. Specifications come from manufacturer specification sheets, submittal sheets and installation manuals, and where a code or efficiency claim is involved it is checked against the primary document — an expansion tank is required by IPC Section 607.3 on a closed system, sized from static supply pressure as well as tank size, and the code does not permit the relief valve to be used for thermal expansion control. Where a government page has gone dead the site re-sources the figure from a live primary document rather than citing a 404. Every product recommendation names a concrete condition under which it is the wrong purchase. The site is equally direct about its limits: it does not test water heaters, has no lab and no test bench, and says no page on it claims otherwise; there are no prices on it anywhere, because it has no live price feed and a stale price is worse than none, so every product link opens the live retailer listing instead; it publishes no star ratings of its own, no aggregate ratings and no customer testimonials; and it is written under one byline with, in its own words, no invented co-authors and no expert panel. Two figures it refuses to let slide are an unqualified GPM number, which it treats as meaningless without the temperature rise attached, and the federal Section 25C tax credit, which expired on December 31, 2025 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and which the site flags as expired precisely because a great deal of published content still advertises it as available.

That is the same arrangement MadGrey LLC runs on every site it operates. Heat & Tap is free to read and funded by affiliate commission through the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program — if a reader buys through a link the retailer may pay a commission, at no extra cost to them — and Amazon is the only retailer the site earns from. Manufacturer links are citations and earn nothing at all. The site makes the conflict-of-interest argument explicitly rather than leaving it to a footer: commission does not affect ranking, because the affiliate rate is effectively the same across every water heater, so there is nothing to be gained by ordering a list one way rather than another. No brand has paid for coverage, a position or a review, and there is no sponsored content. Corrections go to the site's own contact address and are made on the page, with the modified date updated when the content actually changes rather than on a schedule, because a reader can only weigh a pick if they know what it rests on.