Safety showers are essential for safety in a variety of industrial settings and tankless water heaters can be a great way of ensuring that they are performing up to code.

Be it an oil refinery or a steel mill, there are a number of potential hazards that could cause harm to a worker and his or her surrounding peers. While they should be adhering to safety best practices to minimize the potential for injury, at the end of the day, accidents do happen, so your facility needs to be ready for anything that might happen.

This is why safety showers are so essential to plant operations. Not only are they vital for ensuring worker safety if he or she is contaminated with chemicals or clothes catch on fire, they are a requirement of every plant. In most cases, multiple showers are necessary. These showers need to be constantly prepared to perform, and the following are three reasons why tankless hot water heaters are the ideal solution for ensuring that they do so.

1. Point of use installation
Tankless water heaters are 90 percent smaller than their tank counter parts. This makes them easy to install almost anywhere, including the safety shower's location. According to the California Department of Industrial Relations, emergency eyewash and safety showers need to be accessible from anywhere in a plant in 10 seconds or less. By using a tankless hot water heater, the logistics of installing these stations become far easier, without taking up industrial floor space.

2. Consistent hot water supplies
Making sure that there is warm water available to wash the worker of contaminants is an absolute must in an industrial setting. With water heater tanks, there is a limited supply of hot water contingent on the size of the tank and how much has been previously used. If there is a particularly large accident, this hot water could be all used up, leaving some without the necessary hot water supplies.

Tankless water heaters on the other hand, heat water on demand, meaning that there is not lag time between activating the shower and the hot water arriving. Further still, hot water is constantly being produced by the heater, rather than being taken from the tank's reserves. This means that you will never have to worry about having enough hot water for any of your safety needs.

3. Meet ANSI requirements
Simply having ample water supplies is not enough to ensure the safety of employees. You also need to make sure that your safety showers are meeting the ANSI Z358.1 tepid water standards. These require that the water be within a temperature range of 60 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

These measures are in place to make sure that the water neither gives a worker hypothermia or scalds them when they need to cleanse themselves from contaminants. By using an electric tankless water heater, you can set the specific temperature that you would like for the station.

Plant safety is extremely important, which is why even when deciding to go with a tankless water heater is not enough – you need to make sure you select the right model. If there is a change in flow rate on some of these heaters, temperature can spike out of the ANSI required range. To ensure that no one is scalding by the hot water, these devices will effectively dump the hot water on the plant floor, creating its own safety hazards.

Fortunately some models employ flow sensor technology in order to heat the water as it is needed, eliminating the need for the water dump function. This way, you can ensure plant safety, while still taking advantage of the benefits that tankless water heaters have to offer.