Exactly, I posted up a link to one earlier from Lowes as well.
what’s the time to get your money back with the hybrid vs. an average gas one? might end up being 20 years or so and not worth it. I’m assuming a same size just gas is 1/2 as much?
These things are dumb. They use electricity to drive a compressor just like an air conditioner, except with an air conditioner you put the hot heat exchanger outside and the cold one inside thus pumping heat from inside your house and dumping it into the outside air. This sucks heat out of the air in your house and dumps it into your water. So no it’s not magically pulling “extra” heat from the ground. It’s obeying the laws of thermodynamics and moving thermal energy from the air in your basement to the water in your tank. Fine if you don’t mind a cold fucking basement in the winter and proprotionally colder house (or higher heating bills.)
My basement is heated by my furnace so this would just make my furnace work that much harder.
They’re also slower recovering than even an electric water heater, unless you just run it like an electric water heater. They’re also noisy, and from what I’ve gathered online all those extra parts are prone to failure and they keep the cost in line by starting with an extra cheap electric tank and slapping on the heat pump.
I wouldn’t. Maybe they make sense down south where you’re typically trying to cool your house anyway, but not up here.
You can do a number of things, from plum the exhaust into your furnace cold air return, to make the A/C work less in the summer, or plum the exhaust outside, so not chill your basement too much in the winter. And, while it’s not magically gathering heat from outer space, it is rated with a 2.4 energy factor vs. a 0.9 for electric and a 0.58 for gas. So it’s EXTREMELY efficient compared to the other two.
I’m not sold on it yet, but it’s pretty darn neat.
I suspect it all comes down to gas being very cheap which erodes the value to spending more up front for efficiency.
If this is the case I agree. People love seeing “New Hot Water Tank” on the property listing.
My house is already sold :tup:
you don’t worry about your refrigerator heating up your house in the summer do you or not running your stove hood or bathroom vent in the winter? its a small pump…not as small as a frig, but much smaller than an AC condenser…most only need 1000 cubic feet of air space to work…so imagine perhaps once or twice a day your furnace has to deal with “cold” air that might amount to 1000cuft at the very worst… hardly a big tax on the heating system… its like opening the front door to bring in the groceries on a cold day
I’m currently running this hybrid setup in my home. I dare any of you to beat it. The only drawback is that when my wife takes a shower I have to turn it WAY up and usually end up burning the dogs and burgers. Oh, and I occasionally catch a good CO buzz. Gas is your most sensible energy value.
What are you wtf’ing?
Some interesting knowledge, I was thinking gas would be better for when the power goes out, but this may not be the case with modern gas water heaters. My thinking was that even if the power goes out, the gas water heater would still work, because it’s gas (duh), but I guess the pilot doesn’t always stay lit on newer models, they electronically light as needed. So, unless you have a generator, you’re not going to have much hot water in the event of a long power outage.
Can anyone confirm this? I would assume that older, match-lit gas heaters would work fine in the event of a power outage.
You’re correct older ones that you can manually light the pilot light work during a power outage.
I know during that October storm we didn’t have power but we had hot water.
Mine is a manual pilot… always on.
Propane, and it’s still more cost effective than electric. So no doubt Natural gas would be better than electric…
I wanted to get a new high efficiency water heater, but I deemed it pointless. If you figure the current one I have is ~.54 efficient and I go up to a ~.90 or so (power vent)… It would take me 10+ years to recoup the investment. Same goes for tankless… So I’m just sticking with the current one I have until it fails.