About Heat & Tap
A water heater buying guide for people who are about to spend money, not people browsing.
What this site is
Heat & Tap exists to answer one question properly: what should I buy to replace this water heater? Most people arrive at that question under pressure. The old unit is leaking, or the house keeps running out of hot water, and the available advice is either a plumber’s quote or an 8,000-word spec table that never says which unit fits your house.
So the site is built in the order the decision actually gets made. Household size and fuel first, because that is what determines capacity. Then the type — tank, tankless, heat pump or point-of-use. Then the unit. Then the parts that go in with it: the expansion tank, the drain pan, the flush kit, the recirculation pump. That last part is the bit nobody else covers, and it is where most of the unpleasant surprises in a water heater job live.
Who writes it
Brijon M. is the hands-on owner behind MadGrey LLC, the publisher of Heat & Tap. He researches and writes every guide on this site — sizing water heaters by household and fuel, comparing tank, tankless and heat-pump options, and working out which install parts actually go in with each one. Questions and corrections go to contact@heatandtap.com.
One byline on everything. No invented co-authors, no editorial board, no “reviewed by our panel of experts” line over a name that does not correspond to a person.
What we do not claim
We do not install water heaters, we do not run a test lab, and we have never measured a unit’s performance ourselves. You will not find a sentence on this site saying that we did. What we do instead — reading manufacturer documentation, checking code and efficiency claims against primary sources, and doing the sizing arithmetic correctly — is set out in full on how we pick.
We also hold no trade license and claim no plumbing or HVAC credentials, because we have none. Where a job needs a licensed plumber or electrician, the page says so.
How the site makes money
Affiliate commission. Heat & Tap participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and earns a commission on qualifying purchases made through links on the site, at no extra cost to you. The commission rate is effectively the same across every water heater and accessory we link, so there is no commercial incentive to prefer one recommendation over another — and where the cheaper option is the better buy, that is what we say. The full affiliate disclosure has the detail.
Contact
Email contact@heatandtap.com, or use the contact form. Corrections are especially welcome: if a figure on this site is wrong, we would rather hear it from you than leave it up.