A hot water heater exists as a must in any household. Apart from ensuring hot and clean water is available, it also serves as an essential appliance during winter or other cold periods.
Nevertheless, installing a water heater comes with its fair share of problems. This functional appliance could become a giant eye sore and disrupt the whole aesthetics of your home. This reality can make anyone interested in getting one reconsider their action. It's hard to spend a lot of money on a good water heater that would later disfigure the appearance of one's home.
Fortunately, there are techniques you can employ to hide your water heater and make it impossible for anyone to notice it. However, it would help if you did this with caution to preserve the effectiveness and usability of these water heaters. In this article, we'll be taking you through some of these critical ideas that, if remembered, could be beneficial in several ways. Join us as we help you understand them.
The Three Essentials for Hiding a Water Heater
There are certain factors to take into consideration when hiding a water heater. These factors help you determine how to go about concealing it and the proper place to put it without compromising its effectiveness and other essential elements. These factors include durability, price, and aesthetics.
Aesthetics
A room's appearance goes a long way in determining where one places and ultimately conceals a water heater. Making this water heater blend in can be beneficial in rooms you use more frequently. That's why you should consider how the project will appear when completed, and always opt for materials that won't make the tank's location stand out like a sore thumb. When you do this, it can be difficult for anyone to notice your water heater. You won't also have to go the extra mile to hide it.
Durability
This factor shares a similar essence to aesthetics. The popularity of a room increases the significance of this aspect. A cheap curtain can do for a garage or storage-only basement, but something more durable is required for a basement apartment or kitchen. So the room you're putting the water heater in determines the durability of what you'll use to conceal it.
Price
For many people, the cost of a water heater may be the most significant element. Prices range from highly affordable, which exist as curtains, to quite costly, which can be cabinets. It all depends on how much one can afford these additions and their duration at home. But since it is the only brief concern, everything in this aspect should be taken into account last.
Now that we've discussed these factors, let's move on to discussing ways that span across all of them that can help you hide a hot water heater effectively.
Ways to Hide a Hot Water Heater
Setting Up The Foundation
To install your water heater correctly, you must get the fundamentals and understand them well. Doing this will help you prepare ahead of time and go about the process carefully and efficiently. To begin with, you must have a permanent location. Then, come up with the best strategy for hiding or concealing it. In addition, you must make some fundamental inquiries before purchasing a water heater.
Questions like the water heater's size, its intended holding capacity, and the necessary electrical connections, to mention a few, will help you kick-start the hiding process. This step will assist you in developing the best strategy for concealing the water heater from plain view without compromising its intended usage. You might think about utilising a hybrid water heater.
It is crucial to think about this before beginning the construction of the house. If not, it would be like pouring water into a basket, and chaos would undoubtedly result.
Covers for Water Heaters
There are a couple of places you could hide the water heater if you search carefully. However, while looking for these spaces, make sure that your approach to concealing the water heater is long-term reliable, sensible, and feasible.That's where water heater covers come in.
Water heater covers come in a variety of excellent options, but the majority fall into the two main categories of curtains and screens. These look wonderful in locations like the laundry room, a half-completed basement, or the garage, and will conceal the water heater without needing additional remodeling work.
- Curtains
Adding a sliding curtain to act as a partition is a simple approach to concealing your water heater. You must take a measurement of the wall's height to determine the appropriate curtain length and necessary breadth. You should also keep the space between your heater and the curtain in mind. Be sure to make sure they have several inches. The curtain is then suspended from rails that are placed along the ceiling.
Curtains aren't the most appealing coverings for crowded spaces, but they're perfect for the garage or a partially finished or unfinished basement. Additionally, they're a very affordable choice that enables you to switch out designs when you grow tired of how the existing curtains look.
- Screens
Screens are the standard choice when looking for a beautiful water heater cover. These partitions may be regular partition screens or high-standing shutters. Screens are portable because they are freestanding. The buildings are simple to paint, paper, or leave in their natural state.
Enclosures for water heaters
It's frequently ideal for building a full enclosure when you want to conceal your water heater in a finished basement, kitchen, or bustling laundry room. The heater can be hidden more securely and aesthetically using cabinets and closets.
- Closets
A closet is one of the most common places to conceal a water heater. Some apartments keep the water heater in the cabinets of the bedrooms. This way, visitors won't know anything because the closet door will look like any other.
So if you're seeking a simple yet efficient approach to concealing your water heater, making a bespoke closet is an option. You can cover it in shiplap so that it can blend in with the visual aspect of the walls. Another advantage of having a closet is that anytime your home needs plumbing work, you can always get to the water heater with ease. This is probably the most important choice for selling your house later on.
While many think this might help achieve the goal, some say it might also appear fake and purposeful. Understand that the house's general look must be consistent with the task of hiding the water heater.
- Cabinets
Cabinets serve as a terrific enclosure in the kitchen or a finished basement. You can always get wooden cabinets as they are accessible and quite affordable. The only thing about them is that they are frequently made of full metal and convey a stronger mechanical vibe. While some cabinets are upright, others are submerged. Although buying a cabinet to store your hot water heater isn't the cheapest option, it will last for a long time.
Choosing a tankless heater
Another best course of action might be to purchase a tankless heater. Although a tankless heater rarely has the same storage as a tank, it could aid in hiding unsightly tanks. This way, it could also conceal the terrible outlook. It's important to know that achieving this might involve installing a cabinet door.
Keeping the water heater outside the house
If you can, keeping the water heater outside the house is a possible choice. Although it might be pricey, this idea might be good enough to justify serious consideration. You could decide where to install these water heaters, such as on the terrace or garden.
You will undoubtedly need to pay for plumbing costs on the pipe and plumbing system, but once you have done so, the kitchen or bathroom will look much better than before. On the bright side, you might also liberate valuable space inside your house.
You must pick the right technology in this case. You must also select whether you want to use an infrared or regular sauna. For understandable reasons, it might not be practical to place the water heater in your bathroom if you intend to use an infrared sauna.
Try building the water heater inside the walls
It's safe to say many toilets and bathrooms at hotels and other commercial establishments have the cleanest walls. However, you might be taken aback when you notice hot water coming from the numerous faucets. This is achieved by installing independent water heaters inside the walls and connecting them with plumbing and pipelines.
This process entails cautious steps to ensure that the heaters can be removed as and when required for repairs or replacement. This is accomplished by carefully cutting a hole in the wall to accommodate these water heaters. It would not be easy to visually inspect that the water heater was put in this location if concealed partitions were mounted on wooden doors with excellent finishes.
Conclusion
There's no disputing that if you search around, you will undoubtedly find numerous techniques and means by which you can effectively and professionally conceal your water heater. Ultimately, hiding this appliance will also improve the appearance and aesthetics of the kitchen or bathroom.
However, endeavour to implement many of the essential points we mentioned above. Be sure about the important features of the hot water heater, don't hesitate to ask questions, and most importantly, know what suits your space best and work around those factors. By doing all these things, you would be on your way to successfully hiding your hot water heater.
