2024 Heat Pump Water Heater Buyers Guide

if you're building remodeling or changing out your water heater this video is for you we're going to be talking about what's new in 2024 with heat pump water heater technology we're going to talk about some of the features and benefits what the costs are what the savings might look like you may not know but there's actually three different types of heat pump water heaters so we're going to review that as well as talk about some considerations like space and condensate we're also going to get into some myths some common misunderstandings about heat pump water heaters and last we're going to talk about rebates and what the actual cost for these units look like today's build show is sponsored by the Environmental Protection agency's energy star let's get [Music] [Music] going okay are you ready so first off let's start on technology here now first heat pump water heaters this is actually not a very new technology these have been in the market since 2008 I put one of the very first ones in a client's house that had an electric resistance tank and I was blown away at the energy guide Savings of this unit basically uses two old Technologies resistance electric and pretty much all these have that built in but it also has a heat pump your refrigerator in your kitchen is the same type of heat pump technology where it's taking the heat out of the refrigerator and moving that heat to the outside you feel cold in that refrigerator but in fact the heat pump just moved the heat now the hair dryer is basically 100% efficient but these heat pump water heaters on the other hand are almost four times more efficient in fact some of these models are even more than four times efficient because just like your refrigerator it's not making heat it's moving heat and that's the beauty of the heat pump water heater and they're going to put water in that tank that's between 120 some of these units go all the way up to 150° so you're making the same amount of hot water but you're going to spend less money getting there now while we're talking about this Tech I want to also mention gas water heaters now some of the these newer models believe it or not could be replacing a gas water heater when these first came out we only thought of these as replacement for electric resistance tanks but these days you're going to see a little bit later in the video a bunch of these models could easily replace your gas tank now let's talk about the efficiency of these models now the department of energy has these things called a uef the uniform energy factor and if you look at the label in each one of these tanks they have an energy guide on that energy guide it's going to say with this criteria that all manufacturers are labeling under here's how much annual electricity you're going to use now of course this is just an average this is just a value to try and keep all the manufacturers in the same playing field your actual use is going to vary greatly and for instance my water down here in Texas when it comes in from the street is quite a bit hotter than your water if you're watching this in Minnesota so my heat pump water heater down here is going to work even more efficiently because the water is not as cold coming in and in fact I actually might use less money than what that energy guide says so this is all going to vary the other big variable is how many people are in your house right so if you're watching this and you're like me I have four kids at home I use a lot of water my 80 gallon heat pump water heater probably runs a lot more than yours if you only have two people in your house let's say so with that being said I do want to mention that this energy guide is a great way to get a good gauge on what the manual energy use is going to be now I printed this out from the web I don't have this tank with me but if you go online and search for the least cost electric water heater on the marketplace you're going to find something like a 40 or 50 gallon electric resistance tank it's going to run like 5 600 bucks something like that and this is the energy guide off of one of those that I printed almost $500 a year in energy costs and if you break that down we're talking about just shy of $42 per month in electricity that's a fair amount of money on the other hand if you look at this field of these seven tanks that I've got behind me here each one of these is a heat pump water heater and I broke it down and if you look here we're talking about less than half sometimes a quarter of this energy use on each one of these tanks on an annual basis that's a really big deal so already you can see look if I spend more money on a heat pump water heater I'm going to make that back every single month by having a much lower electric bill now one thing you need to know about about these heat pump water heaters though is when they're running they're actually going to make the space around the water heater a little bit cooler and they have a condensate drain which means they're going to act like a little mini dehumidifier what's happening is each one of these units here with the exception of one has the heat pump on top and these heat pumps are bigger than your refrigerator heat pump they're going to range anywhere from maybe a half to as much as one ton of refrigerator size or of heat pump size I should say so when they're running they're going to make a little bit of noise there's going to be a fan in here and they're going to take that air that's around the tank and move the heat from the air and put it into the tank now when that happens there's going to be a benefit in my mind of a little bit of cool air exhausting from these units and it's also going to make some condensate and you're going to notice a lot of these units have condensate drains like this one right here and this AO Smith and that's also going to act as a little bit of a mini dehumidifier when that actual unit is running so there's a bit of a myth around that though let's jump into that right now some people would say or I've heard people say that oh you don't want to use one of those because it's going to make your place too cold in the winter time is that really true I looked at a couple studies out there and one of the studies in particular I'll put a link to it in the description below showed that if this was operating in a basement let's say in a cold climate that'd be a perfect place for one of these if you're in Maine if you're in Minnesota you might operate this in your basement in your mechanical room it will make that space a little bit colder but not by very much at your feet or at the floor level it might drop the temperature by 3 or 4° around the tank in the general area of the tank but at your chest or kind of eye level you're only talking about maybe 2° colder in that space on the other hand for me in Texas I really like having this inside the envelope of the house in fact I'm designing a new house right now with a client and I'm putting it right in the laundry room space so I'll get that benefit of cool air in the laundry room and laundry rooms tend to be a little bit more humid so I've get just a little bit of dehumidification out of this unit that's really a big deal and that's helpful for me at least 10 or 11 months of the year in Texas when it's warm out okay next up let's talk about the three different types of heat pump water heaters this might be a little bit new for you so hang on with me here now most electric resistance tanks run on 240 volts and if you look at these three models right here from LG American Standard and Bradford White these are 240 volt models so if you had an electric resistance water heater you would simply replace it with one of these models cuz a resistance model is going to run on 240 220 240 221 whatever it takes yeah you going to make it all 220 yeah 220 221 whatever it takes now the second category though is these three models right here re AOS Smith and GE all make 120 volt models so for instance check this out the plug that's already wired on this looks like your regular old plug plug just like you're plugging your countertop coffee maker in no need to wire this to 120 and the reason why is these units would be a direct replacement for a gas water heater so if you have a 40 gallon gas water heater that's been there for 10 years and all of a sudden needs replaced all three of these models would be an easy direct replacement pluging into an outlet that's already existing they could be on a dedicated circuit some of the manufacturers say they can even be on a shared circuit which means you could just plug this into any old plug that might be in your garage and believe it or not these would make the same capacity as what you had before with a gas unit and now that's with electric the reason why the EPA cares about this is because we've got more and more sources of electricity in the US going to Renewables where I am in Texas we've got a lot of wind and we've got a lot of solar and a lot of my clients are getting prepared to eventually potentially unplug from the grid they're doing battery storage in their houses they're putting solar on so now why wouldn't I use that solar electricity that I'm making to heat the water and not have a gas line into my house this is good for everybody involved but ultimately it's really good for your wallet the only unit that's a split model this is Seno I've actually I think I've been mispronouncing it as s CO2 but this is what they call a split unit where you've got a tank inside and then you've got a unit that's making the hot water outside so this looks like a standard compressor like you might have on your air conditioning system it's outside and what connects these two is some halfin pecs now this may not be the right unit for you if you're replacing an existing tank if you're building new or remodeling this could be a great choice because then you can do the infrastructure changes that you needed by putting that water line from the outside of the inside the other cool thing about this unit is because it's so small and the compressor is not here I could shove this under a staircase or some tiny little clock Closet close a door and there's no air requirements which leads me to the next thing that I want to talk about which is requirements here every other unit besides the split unit the heat pump is on the top in fact this unit it kind of looks a little bit like R2D2 doesn't it it's got this smaller unit up top here and this is actually what's making that hot water it's putting the heat from the air into the water which means that these all need to be in a space where it's got some air available if you've got a garage if you're in in the South this is a great option if you're got a big basement with a big mechanical room in the north this is a good option however if you have a gas water heater that's been in an enclosed closet you got to be cautious you can't just pop this unit into that closet it needs that air flow so you might need to add let's say a Louver door for that you might want to add a bath F that's able to move that air through that closet with a Louver door and maybe dump that output air into a a closet or into your kitchen or into your laundry room somewhere that you actually Bend benefit from getting one or two degre colder in that space so look up the manufacturer's requirements for Air and for closet size in general they're going to look for maybe a space that's a 10x10 type space or a little bit larger and like I said though you can circumvent that if you've got a Louver door or some other options okay so one of the thing on Space requirements I wanted to mention was several of these units the manufacturers make ducting kits so you could actually pull air from a room next door and dump air to a room adjacent they're never going to move that from a house to a garage door or from a house to the outside it's always going to keep that air within your envelope so just keep that in mind if it was in a garage you might have a garage closet and it might move air between the garage and that closet or if it was inside your house from a laundry room or a mechanical room or a secondary space to the room next door that can be a great option now the other thing you need to remember about these units especially if you're changing from a atmospherically vented gas unit is you're going to have to have a condensate drain you need someplace to dump that water remember I mentioned this one's got the hose pre-installed this is going to make a little bit of water when it runs now it's not going to be acidic water it's going to be a neutral water but you need a place for that to dump so your plumber might install a condensate pump where it could get pumped up and put to a drain somewhere you might have a floor drain if it's in a basement or like I said earlier if you're remodeling or building new just to make sure that that you've got a drain in the plans so that you can plan for that ahead of time and lastly to wrap up this space requirement check out each manufacturers because some manufacturer will tell you they need 700 cubic feet of volume others have actually gone down to like 400 some feet of volume needed for these so you may be surprised that even a smallish room is enough requirement when it comes to cubic feet of air for these to operate properly next up let's talk sizing almost all these heat pump manufacturers make them in various sizes and here's my general advice first off the manufacturer is going to have some advice on their website for what you're doing but if you've got a gas tank and you're moving to a 240 volt heat pump model typically you're going to size up one model so if you've got a 50-gallon gas tank and you're going to a 240 heat pump I would consider going up to let's say a 65 gallon on the other hand if you've got a 120 model meaning one of these that just plugs into a standard wall outlet and you had a gas tank that it's placing you probably want to size up two the reason being that these are going to make W hot water a little bit slower frankly so having that standing 80 gallons let's say of hot water means I've got plenty of capacity for all those showers the other thing to remember is these are going to allow you to set a different temperature on the output and several of these have thermostatic valves built in which means for instance some of these go up to 140 or even 150° in the tank so they've got lots of hot water in that tank and that's actually too hot to Output you wouldn't want water coming out of your TAP at 150 it would scald you so these mixing valves that come with most of these units are going to mix that down to let's say 120 or maybe 125° so these are going to have plenty of capacity but you may need to size up compared to what you've had in the past cuz the first hour rating is what you're going to want to look at for that and again you've got that additional capacity even if you're not sure because you can move the temperature up and by the way as a as a example back to my house my 80 gallon tank is set at 125° and it actually go my unit actually goes up to 150 I never have needed to turn it up because I've never run out of hot but if I did start running out of hot let's say I had a bunch of company coming over I could actually turn that tank temperature up on my model so that's something you can always do in the future okay next let's talk maintenance any tank no matter the fuel source is going to have an anode rod in that tank and it's going to potentially have some sediment in the bottom of the tank so you want to clean those or replace those on a regular basis but one thing that's different about a heat pump water heater is this right here each one of these models is going to have a cleanable filter that simply you take this out and rinse it out to clean it it's really simple and depending on your location it make it dirtier the model that I have in my in-laws house has a filter just like this it's in the garage every time I've cleaned it it's hardly had anything on it on the the other hand if this is in a laund room there might be some of that lint in the air from your dryer it might need to be clean more regular that's really the only regular maintenance that these need okay next let's talk settings there's going to be four main settings on these units there's going to be an electric only mode I would not recommend using that that's just going to use resistance electric that's not going to be very efficient the next mode is going to be hybrid mode which gives you the option or gives the unit the option to either use the heat pump or the electric resistance but it's going to fail the heat pump the next one is heat pump only and that's actually where I'd recommend you set these units at least when you get them put it to heat pump only that's going to be your most efficient way of making hot water if that gives you enough hot water for your family that's perfect cuz that's the most efficient way that this unit is going to make hot water that's going to give you the lowest possible Energy bill and then lastly is going to be vacation mode so if you're going to be gone or if this is a unit that's going into a vacation house put that on vacation mode when you're going to be gone that way it's not making any hot water it's just keeping that tank to like 50 or 60° so that it's going to not freeze if you had some really bad weather let's talk about a misconception that heat pump water heaters are loud now when these units are running they're all going to have somewhat of a low hum you're going to be able to hear it if you're within this proximity of that unit but in general most of today's units that have an energy star logo are going to be between 45 and 55 DB when they're running pretty similar to a modern dishwasher when it's running and the other thing to notice is that over the last few years manufacturers have really focused on that quietness level and most of them have dropped significantly in fact as much as maybe 10 DB from some manufacturers and that's a big deal 10 DB represents a 50% reduction in sound so almost all these units as long as you're not right next to them if you're in a room next door you're really not going to hear it they're not loud and remember with the ufs on these units being between between 3 and 1 half or maybe even over four that means they're going to be four times more efficient than even the most efficient gas tankless water heater on the market which means that every one of these units is probably going to be less expensive for you to operate in terms of dollars out of your pocket on a monthly basis than really any gas water heater in the market today and lastly the other thing I want to mention here was that they're super simple to install that is a little bit of a myth you do want an installer that knows what they're talking about and you really want to read the directions because we as we talked about earlier the space requirements the type of install the electrical requirements this isn't really a do-it-yourself project unless you're a builder for a living like I am you really want to get a plumber out there who knows what they're doing and has installed these before to make sure they get installed correctly another thing I want to mention here is if you're a builder who's building new construction and you utilize the hers scores by going to one of these units these heat pumps compared to a Standard Electric resistance you're going to save anywhere from two to maybe six points on your her score you're going to bring that down so that's a really big deal okay guys let's close out the video I think I've made a pretty good case for these being crazy efficient and a very good choice however I did say earlier they tend to be more expensive than a standard electric or a standard gas but the good news is there's some money available for you to bring those down so first off utility rebates there's rebates around all over the place for instance for me in Austin Texas my local utility Austin Energy would give me $800 right off the top if I bought one of these units so that's a big deal and then the other thing that I wanted to mention by the way those are going to be available for you across the US and I'll put a link in the description so you can find your local utility rebates but for anybody in the United States as of January 1 2023 the inflation reduction Act is going to give you a 30% tax credit on not only the unit itself but the install cost as well up to $2,000 okay y'all I think we made a pretty good case here that these heat pump water heaters no matter which manufacturer you go with they are crazy efficient and if you look at the energy guides on here you're going to see that on day one you're going to save money on your utilities compared to a standard gas or a standard electric resistance model not only on the unit itself but also on the installation cost so both your unit that you're buying and the plumber to install it a 30% rebate up to $2,000 so between those two you can save some serious dollars in my book you might end up spending less money on one of these from day one but if you factor in the savings even if you don't have as big a rebate as I do let's say in Austin it's not going to take you long most of these unit within 2 or 3 years when you factor in the utility cost you're going to seriously make that up and from there on in it's going to be paying you this is a really good deal you definitely want to jump in big thanks to the epa's energy star program for sponsoring this video as I said earlier I put the first uh heat pump water heater available to me which was around 2009 available here in Texas and I put them in ever since I've loved seeing the manufacturers come out with newer and better and quieter and more efficient models this is really a golden age for heat pump water heaters and every one of these units would be a great choice for your house if you're not currently subscriber guys hit that subscribe button below we've got new content here every Tuesday and every Friday follow us on Tik Tok or Instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 126,998

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build

Id: YT0zTRD7N2s

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024