Tankless solutions, Texas-style

“AHI Technologies didn’t reinvent the wheel – they created an entirely new technology.” — Jerry Farmer, Gulf States Plumbing

Hot water is a necessity in a grocery store. The deli department needs it. The pharmacy needs it. And, most recently, the trendy sushi department needs it. If you’ve ever had to run up and down the aisles looking for a specific product, you know that grocery stores can be pretty spaced out. Tank water heaters are the standard when it comes to large applications such as grocery stores. But they come with their share of issues.

First, water needs to be hot on-demand in grocery stores to meet both corporate energy management and the health department’s hot water delivery requirements. For cost or environmental reasons, a tank system that maintains hot water 24/7 is not the ideal solution. Plus, these units take time to actually deliver hot water. You know the drill: You turn the faucet on and watch as water (and money) runs down the drain, while you wait for it to get hot. Depending on how far away you are from the tank, the wait time could be as long as one minute. Lastly, the recirculating loop that is required to deliver hot water with a centralized hot water supply consumes an additional 20 – 25% of hot water heating energy.

As you can see, financial, environmental and timeliness factors associated with traditional on-demand recirculating loop and tank systems can be a burden for grocery store managers. So, is there a better way to get hot water to all these departments within one store?

Indeed there is; let’s look to Texas as a prime example. Texas is a state with hard water. Over time, traditional tank water heaters build up lime scale, due to the coils immersed in that water. When the units calcify, it causes a decline in the quality of water and an increase in the energy needed to create and maintain hot water.

Enter Coilless Technology, thanks to AHI Technologies

Jerry Farmer of Gulf States Plumbing in Texas knows his hot water heaters. He’s been in the business for over 25 years and is the local “guru” for plumbing design for grocery stores. National store chains such as Kroger’s, as well as regional chains, rely on Gulf States Plumbing to design, install and maintain hot water supply systems for their stores in Texas. Started in 1984, Gulf States Plumbing is heavy into design build, has about 100 employees and specializes in water work and steam systems for grocery stores, big box retailers, medical, school and industrial facilities. Satisfied customers include HEB, Kroger’s, Randalls and Home Depot.

“We are using the AHI Technologies’ unit because it offers several things that the other brands don’t offer. They don’t lime up in hard water the way the others do, and they don’t use as much electricity to operate as the others. The warranty is very good and surpasses the other brands as well. That is important to the customer and, as a plumbing system designer, I am always looking for products that will stand up to the daily duties of the commercial world,” said Jerry.

At one store, Jerry and his team decided to go with an electric tankless water heater installed close to the fixture. After two tries with two different brands of electric tankless, Jerry couldn’t get the results that he needed to meet both the customer’s corporate energy management goal and the health department’s requirement. “The other two brands I tried resulted in a longer delivery time than that required by the health department,” Jerry said.

AHI’s rep in Texas, Oslin Nation, who works closely with Jerry’s team, has other satisfied customers that use AHI Coilless Technology tankless in restaurants, schools and homes. “We chose to represent AHI Technologies because of its coilless technology and the benefits it has over standard coiled water heaters,” said Mike Barnett, marketing and business development manager for Oslin Nation. With offices in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Oslin Nation works with a large network of wholesalers to support contractors on the AHI products stocked.

After using AHI Technologies since the beginning of the year with great results, Jerry and his team have already recommended AHI Technologies’ tankless water heaters to four grocery store chains in Texas and have received approval to move forward with installation. Even better, AHI Technologies does not use coils, there is no lime scale build-up within the units and there are no callbacks after installation, which he used to get.

The team installed a ThermoLock unit in the meat department. The result is reduced kWh needed and delivery of hot water at 12 seconds; meeting all requirements Gulf States Plumbing has to meet for the supermarket customer, who in turn has to meet health and corporate department requirements. Their energy manager is happy with what Jerry was able to achieve using AHI’s Coilless Technology® enabled tankless solution, including the fact that all those AHI ThermoLock-enabled units are capable of preventing unauthorized changes in temperature setting. That provides peace of mind for the customer, so that they know the hot water temperature will comply every time for the health department’s inspection.

Jerry is now specifying for three new stores, with a total of 35 units of various Coilless Technology tankless models from AHI. He believes that coilless technology is the future of water heating: It doesn’t scale up, doesn’t need maintenance, maintains high efficiency and delivers hot water quicker.

The key here is not just the savings in terms of energy costs related to water. Before the system is even installed, there is the upfront savings related to installation. With traditional tank water heaters, many large installations install circulating hot water systems and loop the water throughout the building.
Plus, with the number of remodels that occur in grocery stores, it’s unimaginable to have to constantly re-pipe and reroute the circulating water system. With a point-of-use unit such as AHI Technologies, you just move the unit from one location to the next.

The same is true if one of the units goes down. Rather than shutting down your entire hot water system to fix one unit, you simply fix the problem at its core. In this case, the whole does not affect the sum of its parts.