[MrEnergyCzar]

This Heat Pump Hot Water Heater uses half the electricity of a regular electric hot water heater plus it cools and dehumidifies your basement......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxiLYA6yXQ0

MrEnergyCzar

[efarmer]

So at about $1600 versus $250 you are saving $1800 on electricity versus an electric water heater over 5 years? How does it compare to a tankless gas powered hot water heater where you are not dealing with a 50 gallon insulated thermal mass all the time?

[Ludi]

We put a timer (approx $30) on our old electric hot water heater so it runs only 4 hours a day and we have plenty of hot water at a fraction of the electricity usage. It'll be a couple months before I can calculate how much we're saving, but so far it's enough to offset our use of air conditioning.

[efarmer]

I have a 12 gallon backed up by the original 40 gallon on a manual switch. It does pretty good, unless I am called to song in the shower, it then makes me sing shorter songs in a very high voice.

[MrEnergyCzar]

So at about $1600 versus $250 you are saving $1800 on electricity versus an electric water heater over 5 years? How does it compare to a tankless gas powered hot water heater where you are not dealing with a 50 gallon insulated thermal mass all the time?

If insuring against peak oil is not the primary concern and money is the main issue, then a tankless gas would be the best option as long as gas doesn't pop up to $14 per unit and stays where it is now etc....for me, I would never rely directly on using fossil fuels for anything, putting gas in my car is bad enough... the energy star unit is very insulated and on the tag says it uses about $200 per year in electricity which is ridiculously low for hot water....

[MrEnergyCzar]

We put a timer (approx $30) on our old electric hot water heater so it runs only 4 hours a day and we have plenty of hot water at a fraction of the electricity usage. It'll be a couple months before I can calculate how much we're saving, but so far it's enough to offset our use of air conditioning.

You'll probably find that you are cutting your usage in about half. Going from 4 to 5 KWH per day down to 2 - 3 KWH per day.... great move...

[IslandCrow]

I had installed a ground heat exchange that takes care of heating the house and the hot water. Because we use a (wood-burning) sauna for regualar washing our hot water comes to only about 10% of the use of the heat pump.

This replaced a 30+ yearl old oil heating system. Given how costs of oil and electricity have jumped all over the place, my estimates for the pay-back time keep moving. The unit was very expensive so at the time of installation I estimated that the payback would be about 11-12 years, it dropped to 8 years (with high oil costs in 2008), then went back to 12 years as oil prices crashed! Currently (4 years after installation) my estimate is in the 9-10 year range.

In a cold country, a good heat pump system should use only about 1/3rd of the electricity that would be needed for direct electic heating (so a 50% saving for the one in the video is not very efficient). Also as last winter was very cold here many people found that an air heat exchange just stopped working when it was needed most! During February (the coldest time) our system just needed 6 hours of supplimental electric heating to keep the house warm enough - that is less than 1% of the time, with the rest the heat exchange was enough (it ran for 440 hours so about 2/3rds of the time). In 2009 the system used 5 500 kWh.

[Expatriot]

Basic 232 dollar electric water heater 40 gallons - simple, 5 year tank warranty, probably good for 8-10 years minimum, easy to replace when done.

1500 dollar fancy-pants water heater - huge up front investment, savings "up to" 50%, can't find warranty info, potentially expensive to fix, if fixable, filter expense, more complex system, expensive to replace. If, for example, it fails after 8 years, then you're probably no better than break even, and more likely you lost money.

My 40 gallon with about 4 users costs me about 25 bucks a month. Even if this unit could save me 50%, which I doubt, it's only 12 bucks a month, or 144 bucks a year, minus filter cost, if any. So 1500-232 is about 1250, divided by 144 is about 8 years. That's ignoring the time value of money and ignoring that the thing could easily fail before 8 years.

In the end, electric would have to get more pricey around here before I sunk 1500 into a water heater.

If the SHTF with regard to electric, however, you had better believe that a point-of-service unit in two places (shower and kitchen) is going to be God, with 1500 always-on water heaters not in the running.

This unit reminds me of the Toyota Pious - a feel-good unit that may not make much financial sense.

[jamespipers]

It works like a air conditioner, it just work in an opposite way. The cooler tubes are on your basement, and the heater tubes are in your water tubes. And the most important thing is it consumes a lesser energy consumption.

[efarmer]

So we have roughly 80 million living units in America, and I'll make the assumption that they have
40 gallon hot water heaters. So we have 3 billion+ gallons or so of hot water being kept at set point
24/7 so it is convenient when you turn the faucet. You are proposing we take a $300 appliance and replace it with a $1500 appliance to reduce energy consumption. It is a uniquely American solution indeed. Like driving an SUV 15 miles for a burrito and drinking a plastic bottle of water to show you are a weight watcher and recycling the bottle to show you are green. I can teach you how to make your own burrito for under a buck.

Why not cut down the standby pool of hot water nationally to 1 billion gallons and use simple insulated
water heaters of lower storage capacity and forcing conservation directly on consumers?

Throwing high tech at wanton consumer waste is like wearing a prophylactic during a gun fight.

And for the use of larger heat pumps sized to keep living air at a constant 70F, I have the exact
same prescription.

We need to drop some of our demands and we can't figure out how to make a buck on that,
can we?

Bucky Fuller said if you want to look at the quality of a civilization look at how they use energy.
We are cave men in Las Vegas with bling.

"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."

"The end game of politics is picking up a gun."

R. Buckminster Fuller

[pasttense]

We put a timer (approx $30) on our old electric hot water heater so it runs only 4 hours a day and we have plenty of hot water at a fraction of the electricity usage. It'll be a couple months before I can calculate how much we're saving, but so far it's enough to offset our use of air conditioning.

So it's been a couple months--what are the results?

[MarkJ]

Although we have some of the highest electric rates in the nation, many of our heating and heating fuel customers have electric hot water heaters since they're cheap to buy, cheap to service, cheap to replace and don't need gas lines, oil lines, chimney venting, chimney liners, side wall venting, power venters, draft proving safety switches, complex controls etc.

Location of gas fired, oil fired and indirect fired water heaters is a much greater issue due to venting, gas piping and burner/boiler locations as well.

Some local codes wont allow you vent a water heater into an unlined chimney, plus many chimneys are in terrible condition, so they'd be forced to install a new chimney, chimney liner, more expensive side wall vented water heater, power venter... or an el-cheapo electric unit.

Many of the electric hot water heaters are pretty inefficient since the bottoms are loaded with mineral deposits, or the dip tubes are broken.

Since many people dump load their electric hot water heaters since the recovery rate is poor, they often oversize the units, or install additional units, buffer tanks etc. Many of the empty nesters and other households with one or two occupants have 50 gallon units, plus many people with vacation homes leave their units running 24/7/365.


Many people turn their water heaters up well past 140 F to combat legionella.


Since boilers outnumber furnaces in much of the North Country, many of our customers produce domestic hot water via boilers with tankless coils, or indirect hot water heaters.

Indirect water heaters are often used since performance is an issue, especially in households with high simultaneous hot water demand that would dumpload most water heaters in minutes.

As homes have grown in size, the amount of showers, baths and washers have grown as well, so it's pretty common to have numerous people using high volumes of hot water at the same time.

[MrEnergyCzar]

We put a timer (approx $30) on our old electric hot water heater so it runs only 4 hours a day and we have plenty of hot water at a fraction of the electricity usage. It'll be a couple months before I can calculate how much we're saving, but so far it's enough to offset our use of air conditioning.

So it's been a couple months--what are the results?

He's probably cut his electric usage in half with the timer or $15 per month roughly....

MrEnergyCzar

[Frank]

The answer for domestic hot water is solar thermal. Even here in Maine solar thermal systems work most of the year. If you use an electric heater (traditional or heat pump) PV's will provide clean energy for years. Tankless coils are great for response but horrible for emissions and standby losses.

[MarkJ]

The average standby loss for a quality indirect water heater is around 1/2 degree F per hour.

Recovery rates are generally double that of gas fired water heaters, plus they can produce 3/4X the amount of hot water.

Some of the most costly water heaters to operate are boiler mounted tankless coils. These units are pretty wasteful to begin with, but the tightly wound small diameter coils are often loaded with deposits making them much more inefficient, plus maintenance, repair and replacement costs are high due to the increasing cost of copper, fuel and professional labor.

Even though the cost is substantial, we still have hundreds of customers with boiler mounted tankless coils. To add insult to injury, most of the boilers are grossly oversized, grossly inefficient vertical pin-style boilers which already use substantial amounts of fuel for space heating.


I just serviced a 60 plus year old boiler with an old trumpet style tankless coil that uses about 2 gallons per day of heating oil in the off season to produce hot water for an older couple with modest hot water demands.

Standby loss and stack loss on the old vertical pin-style and horizontal tube-style boilers is substantial as well.

Many of our customers are still opting for electric hot water heaters due to the cost, installation and code issues I listed above.

[MrEnergyCzar]

The answer for domestic hot water is solar thermal. Even here in Maine solar thermal systems work most of the year. If you use an electric heater (traditional or heat pump) PV's will provide clean energy for years. Tankless coils are great for response but horrible for emissions and standby losses.

Ideally Solar thermal collectors are the way to go. The heat pump water heaters out now are the more practical way to go because most people can't afford the thermal set-up etc...

MrEnergyCzar

[Frank]

Depending on the install, solar thermal can be very economical - especially for new construction. 30% federal tax credit, some States have "incentives" and mortgage interest is still tax deductible i.e. money borrowed for the installation as part of the mortgage.

[Shaved Monkey]

I've got evacuated glass tubes Solar with electric back up
I've switched the back up off for over 6 months now, never ran out of hot water and its all free.
Sub tropics and a north facing roof help (yeh its north down here)

[xander24]

For climates with moderate heating and cooling needs, heat pumps gives an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioners. Like your refrigerator, heat pumps use electricity to move heat from a cool space into a warm, making the cool space cooler and the warm space heater. During the heating season, heat pumps move heat from the cool outdoors into your warm house; during the cooling season, heat pumps move heat from your cool house into the warm outdoors.


_________________
steel bridge | bridge builder

[mikecarter]

There are lots of heat pump water heaters that revolutionize the way we heat water. There are new products that are recently introduced in utilizing super-efficient technology that cuts water heating costs by more than half! If you have time to plan ahead, consider new technology appliances for your next water heater purchase.