I have the same water heater. i live in Maine and the water heater is in my basement where it gets down to 45 degrees in the winter time. The water heater is kept in efficiency mode. It's just me and my wife and we never run out of hot water. Great video. I'm guessing your students like you, you seem like a very cool guy.
They also have tankless electric water heaters but heat pump technology is where this technology really shines. I haven't noticed any change to my electric bill and essentially eliminated my natural gas bill (aside from connectivity charges and the few dollars I use for my cooking needs- cooking with fire is just better).
For this water heater, I ordered from Lowes and the incentive was applied at the point of sale. Ended up paying $220 after tax. (originally 1200). Federal incentives are available for heat pump water heater installation.
If your going to install in a basement, I highly recommend you duck the cold air out of the house, ad he’s not kidding that it cold air blowing out . Great in summer but in winter we have found it makes the area damp with a noticeable drop in the room by a good 20-40f depending on how hard it’s working. If you have a basement air heating system it will extract a lot of the ambient heat that normally get. But without it that cold air has to go
I almost got one of these but was over $500 more than natural gas and would have had to run 220 line. No rebates from utilities here. Didn’t know they were loud either but plan to get this and solar on next home.
Installation of the hot water heater was $500 for labor to cap off the gas line and install the new unit. Expansion tank was less than $50 (required to bring up to code). Electrical upgrades (which qualify for federal tax credit) was done along with my EV car charger installation by the same company so it was bundled in with that project (also qualifies for federal tax rebate). All in all I would say the cost for unit AND install came out to less than the price of the water heater itself at MSRP (1200) due to all the incentives.
You might want to put your clothes dryer pretty high on your replacement list. The newer heat pump condensing clothes dryers use very little electricity. When you consider that clothes dryers are (or have been) known as energy hogs, you will see how big of a difference this can make.
The more energy efficient appliances the better. But I use hot water every day. I don’t do laundry everyday, I can sometimes go weeks without needing to do laundry. Hot water heater runs daily
Hey Darwin I was wondering if in the future can you get a home wind turbine and see how much energy it produce for you when it's windy in Winters or Windy and general because you trying to be independent as possible from the grid I know home wind turbine can be expensive but hopefully in the future you can buy one and test out.
Thanks for the comment. I think that's a great concept in theory to have both wind and solar but the truth is that solar itself is sufficient to supply 100% of my energy needs. If I had energy storage (a battery), this would take care of my energy needs when the sun is not shining. Even during the winter months, I am breaking even on the energy used vs the energy generated. This is my situation in southern CA where it's sunny the majority of days, and even on cloudy days the energy generated is decent. Wind might be better for windy parts of the US that don't get much sun. Plus solar is much less maintenance without any moving parts and just works.
@@DarwinChaug plus, solar doesn't kill birds. I'm guessing you'r an awesome teacher and your kids really love you. What subject do you teach? (I hit subscribe)
Hi, thanks for this video on the hybrid hot water heater. Good stuff. I’ve also enjoyed your videos on the solar roof as I am considering for my house. Question on the hot water heater. How many KWhs does it use on average vs. a regular electric hot water heater ? Any thoughts on how many kwhs it would save if I switch ? Thanks
depends how much hot water you use, I estimate about 2-3kwh per day for around 200-250 gallons total (both cold and hot water) of usage per day. This will save way more energy than a tankless electric water heater, not even close. Just check the label for whatever unit you're interested in, the energy information will always show there.
I would say only if your current water heater is going out or if you’re tankless electric right now and it’s draining a lot of energy and you’re off grid. Otherwise probably best to upgrade when you current one is going out. If you have incentives to buy one then that’s a different story.
It's an A/O smith. Pause the video at 1:21 to see the screenshot of the product page from Lowes. Yes I had a subpanel installed which is the one you see in the video, this subpanel powers a few things like my EV car charging, a few outlets on the exterior of the house and the hot water heater.
Now that you have a new water heater that marries up to the solar panels, are there any other items in your house you could replace as well? Such as a refrigerator? Stove? Oven? AC? You get the drift.
Anything that uses electricity is basically "married" up to the solar panels. HVAC a/c and heater - same- see my video on mini-split a/c. Charging my car - yes (no more gasoline bill). Same with all appliances like fridge, dishwasher. lights, computers, etc. The only thing not powered by electricity in my house is the stove/oven, which I'll gladly pay for (cooking is just better with flame). Hope that helps.
I am also a Teacher living in Thailand the perfect country for Solar but I see in nowhere? I think a major part of this is because Non-Thais cannot own houses or land and the power company Electric are big and powerful and I have been told they do not allow you to sell your excess energy back to them, another factor is skilled workers regarding the installation. This could be expensive!
Sounds like you need to go with an off-grid system with some batteries. There are many people who've built their own and solar panels are getting cheaper to source. I'm sure if you look around RU-vid you'll find a good amount of info about this topic.
Any reason you didn't go with an electric tankless model? I am in the process of building my house with a tesla solarroof and thinking tankless is the way to go since it would only heat water when needed but still be fully electric so it would be powered by the tesla system.
Tankless will use way more energy because the water needs to be heated quickly and use electric heating elements. With a "heat-pump" water heater you're using the heat pump to draw heat from it's environment to heat the water. I estimate about 2-3 kwh used a day to heat water. This allows for more of my energy to be banked back into net energy metering. Hope this makes sense, if you take a look at the energy consumption charts between a hybrid heat pump water heater vs a tankless electric water heater you'll notice a huge difference in the consumption of energy.
don't know the electricity break down but I keep it on hybrid mode so majority of the time it uses the heat pump to warm water. After 2 years it's been flawless.
I personally don't have one because I don't do laundry that often. Take a look at the energy efficiency label and see if it is worth it based on how often you dry clothes
hardwire and 30 amps. Electrician can easily a 240v line from your electrical panel to the water heater. If a good distance away, good idea to install a subpanel or a shutoff switch closeby.
Excellent. No issues, clean the filter out every once in awhile by hosing it off. Very efficient, cut my gas usage by a large amount and no noticeable increase in electricity bill. Unbeatable for $200 (since I had the instantly applied subsidy).
1:20 in the video: A/O smith brand. Cost $219.99 because the utility incentive ($1000) was applied at the point of purchase, didn't have to wait for a rebate.
it depends on the sizing of the solar roof. When you size a solar system. Mine is a 8.2kw system. The directions the panel face, angle on the roof, local surroundings/objects/planes flying over all have an impact on the effectiveness of solar generation. If a solar system is more efficient then it would just rated a larger kw # and take up less space. But a larger system that isn't in an ideal location would generate much less than a smaller system set up correctly (all panels facing south-for example).
If you have the space, yes. You just need 1 drain line run to the exterior or to a drain. This for the condensation line which draws the moisture out of the air. Seems perfect for the attic since it’ll work as a air conditioner when running and cool the area. Also lot of heat in the attic that the heat pump can draw on to heat your water (since hot air rises). Good luck!
Usually it’s in an indoor environment so it’ll cool a basement or garage. You don’t want it in an immediate living area, what if it’s winter and you want heat?
Heat pump kicks on between 40 - 120 F. Will work with electricity anything outside that range. In Ohio I'm sure it'll kick on electricity heating mode. I'm in so. Cal so it's going to use heat pump 100% of the time.
Less useful for us Ohioans for sure, but we have a heat pump for our whole house heating and A/C and like it. But below 30-something it switches to natural gas for heat.
Hold on a second, back up the donkey truck just a little bit. How exactly is natural gas a renewable resource? I’m pretty sure you don’t understand what a renewable resource is if you believe natural gas is one.
I guess you could, seems like a lot of work for a system that only runs when heating the water. Also what if you want heat? Get a solar system and minisplit a/c and heat system (with it's own heat pump) for most efficient heating/cooling. Check out my video on that.
@@DarwinChaug I think that renewable energy biggest contribution is that people are really thing about energy efficiency and a second side benefit is people wont be at the mercy of people power companies
A heatpump water heater like the one in my video has the flexibility to heat water extremely quickly using electrical heating elements when necessary. Other times it uses a heatpump which is extremely energy efficient to heat the water. No matter which one, it is 100% all powered by solar as all my electricity is essentially generated from my solar roof. Even on the most cloudy days, my roof generates more than enough energy to power/heat the water along with other appliances in the house. Also, as seen in the video with incentives, only cost me $200.
Wait...."natural gas is a renewable energy resource" but carbon emitting? Unless it's bio-gas, natural gas is petroleum based, and is not considered renewable.
