A.O. Smith Voltex® AL Smart Hybrid Electric Heat Pump Water Heater Live-Fire Training

foreign [Music] John Russo with Wells Darby today we're in front of a AO Smith heat pump water heater I just want to say it now uh don't get overwhelmed by what you see going on here we're going to go through it from top to bottom but we've uh we took a standard water heater and turned it into a training device for us so we've added a couple of meters to it and uh you know some hoses for cold water in hot water out we got shower heads over here to run showers so we can show the performance of the unit but we'll uh we'll just try to simplify and take all the fear out of heat pump water heaters so everything from the gray down is is a standard water heater okay we did cut away the the covers here but right behind here there's a 4500 watt upper element at the bottom there's a 4500 watt lower element they do not work simultaneously they will work one at a time as needed from the black portion here up this is where the heat pump lives so everything that's going to go on with the heat pump side of this is going to take place up here and uh we're going to start right there so heat pump water heaters why heat pump water heaters the main reason is right here efficiency so this is a 50 gallon heat pump water heater it will cost you approximately 120 a year to produce hot water If This Were a standard 50 gallon electric water heater it's going to be probably closer to 700 a year so full 10-year warranty so over that 10 years you have a warranty on this unit again a longer warranty than a typical electric with the rebates that are in play very close on pricing between a standard electric water heater and a heat pump water heater on the AO Smith version everything is now off of the top so this is our fresh air Inlet to the heat pump it has a filter if the filter gets dirty the control will let you know so our air intake is going to be here our air exhaust is going to be here and because we're a heat pump we're in heat pump mode this will be cooler air coming out this can be left within the space of the home whether it's a basement a closet you need 450 cubic feet of air in order to support the demand of the heat pump this can also be piped to the exterior of the home or somewhere else in the home and you can do that with eight seven six or five inch pipe depending on how long the run is so also with the new version of the heat pump water heater you have the ability for top takeoffs or side takeoffs on this unit we are plumbed through the side so cold water goes in down here hot water comes out up here we use the mix valve which is kind of important on a heat pump water heater because we want to elevate the storage temperature and then we've also installed the Flexcon ph5 expansion tank to make sure that we can take up the expansion of the water as we heat it up currently you see off the hot tapping here I have a valve and a hose keep in mind this is a training unit so I use this just to bleed the air off of it and to use it as a vent when I'm draining the heater so this normally wouldn't be here the two caps come on the two side ports if you're going to pipe from the side you're going to move them up here if you're going to pipe from the top you're going to leave them where they are if you are going to pipe from the top this drop tube goes from here all the way down to here to get to the tank so make sure you have a backup wrench on there on the hot and cold side when you're tightening up your fittings because you have a lot of Leverage there based on the length of the pipe it's in there pretty secure but it's important to get a backup on there if you're going to pipe from the Top If You Ever Had to remove the cover right here to get to the anode rod or see what's going on with the heat pump I would recommend you know leaving yourself some room so if you're going to put valves right here you're only going to have that much room to lift it off you're probably going to eventually end up cutting the top So to avoid that let's just try to get our piping up a little higher so if we need to look underneath here or change an anode rod you know we can we got the space to do that I mentioned the anode rod this heater you know heaters keep getting smarter and smarter So within the control we will monitor the anode rod when the anode rod is used up and ready to be replaced the control will let you know that so it's an aluminum anode rod with a cast iron core so as we use up that anode rod to take care of you know some of the areas where we got some aggressive water the control has the ability to let you know that the anode rod is used up and then it's time to replace it in addition to that with these units getting smarter dry firing of electric elements is one of the top reasons for electric elements to fail we have dry fire protection now on these units so if the unit is not completely full you know nobody bled the air out of it and normally we go into upper element with the hybrid water heater first we won't fry the upper element it will hold itself off until it's surrounded with water so on to the control and uh we'll just just run right in here tight so out of the box from the factory it will have a 120 degree Target temperature it will be set in hybrid mode I hope you can see this on film but there's a little Green Dot right there that tells us we're in hybrid mode it also tells us right here this is a picture of an electric element it shows us that the electric element is currently on there's a caution uh indicator right here if there's an error code taking place this will be lit and the error code will be displayed right here is a lock button if you want to lock the control out you have the ability to do that I'm not going to show you how on the on this demo but we can lock the control out and unlock the control on the job site so the most efficient way to run this in our footprint is hybrid mode hybrid mode means the heat pump water heater will work and it will also use the electric elements as needed so again back to elevating the target temperature we'd like to store this tank at like 140. we have the ability to go all the way to 150 if I store the water hotter that will give me better performance out of the tank it will also allow me to run on the on the heat pump more than the electric elements so that will make it more efficient it'll keep our numbers closer to the 120 a year to produce hot water so what we've done here we've put a couple of meters here so I've had the heat pump water we've I don't know Brett would we fired us up like 45 minutes ago so about 45 minutes ago when we fired it up I think we are at 26 Celsius with the hot gas so the heat pump has gone from 26 degrees hot gas to 40 degrees hot gas so we're right around 100 degrees Fahrenheit so what's what's different here from an electric water here to the heat pump is we're producing hot gas currently and all the way down here in the lower window you can see these aluminum aluminum pipes that run around the outside of the tank that's what has our hot gas our refrigerant in there so we have insulation on the back side and the insulation is thicker and causes the hot gases to force their way into the tank so there are several wraps around this tank and this white wire right here that's going to our meter and we have that attached to the aluminum pipes which is carrying our hot refrigerant gas and that's where we're monitoring the temperature so that's how a heat pump water heater works we turn the heat pump on you know if you think a Fujitsu heat pump right we can do heating and cooling well here we're just doing heating so we're producing hot gas with our our compressor up top that hot gas is being forced around the outside of the tank and the heat energy is being absorbed into the water so the heat pump right now is doing majority of the work and that's how we want this to operate so as far from an electrical standpoint right here is the connection point for the electric this is the same as a 50 gallon water here it is a 30 amp circuit that goes to the unit that 30 amp circuit runs the heat pump and also runs the heating elements and again in hybrid mode we can run the heat pump and either the upper or lower element at the same time we just can't run both electric elements at the same time so with this unit on the controller there's a battery backup so there will be a white tab right here it says battery there'll be a white tab right here you need to remove that if you don't remove it you'll get a 48 error code and that'll just tell you to remove it so we have a couple of other buttons here I just want to go through them hybrid is how it's going to come from the factory if you're in a very warm climate let's say I don't know you got a second home in South Carolina and you want to put one of these in your home in South Carolina you could probably run it in heat pump only you would just push that and that green light would come on and now it would be just heat pump only no electric backup we have straight electric if you have a need to make it a straight electric water heater you can push that button and make it a straight electric water heater if you go away you can push the vacation button and that will allow the unit to run at cooler temperatures while you're on vacation you have Wi-Fi capability with this controller so if you want your unit to email you for whatever reason filter on the intake clogged anode rod used up if you put the add-on water shut off it will email you and tell you that you have a problem with your water heater and it'll identify what that problem is you also have bluetooth capability so if you want to sit on your couch and talk to your water heater you have the ability to do that up and down arrows right here that's what would adjust your temperature you would push this and it would adjust your temperature and when you get done adjusting your temperature you would just have to hit the enter button and that will make the change to the Target temperature that you're looking for if you decide you want to tie into the grid to get lower electric rates this will take the 2045a controller and uh it will plug directly into this control and now your electric company will monitor the use of your hot water and if there's a need to reduce electric draw they may you know take some electric away from you during the day and allow you to run it more at night so that's an option I'm not saying it has to be done but this water heater is already prepped for that working our way down the water heater again this is a 50 gallon electric water heater you know we'll give you over 66 gallons of hot water the first hour at 120 degrees and if we add the mix valve we can increase that so I'm going to go down here so with every single heat pump water here we have this is a uh this is a a water sensor and we've taken this on and off several times so right there those two little metal tabs what they're going to do you're going to attach this to the side of the tank and if the pan were to fill up those two sensors would recognize the water that recognizing the water it will send a email to tell you that you have a problem at your water heater and it will also set off an alarm when with the control if you want to go one step further AO Smith has a shutoff device so if this alarm is set off the signal is sent up to the control the control then sends a signal to the water shutoff device and this will shut your water off so it will immediately shut down the street pressure that's going to the tank depending on where the leak is within the tank it will reduce the amount of water that leaks into your pan so that's an option currently we just launched 120 volt unit plug-in style unit that is standard on that unit and we will have another unit coming out later this year where this will be standard on that unit it'll be the max so again this is the 50 gallon we have a 66 we have an 80 gallon so basically what does that mean to you the consumer the contractor you know whoever it is it's going to be purchasing it if I take a one dollar bill and I feed it into this Appliance I'm going to get 3.80 something cents worth of hot water out of that one dollar if I do that with our 66 gallon I put that in there I'm going to get over four dollars worth of energy for that gallon producing hot water and on the 80 it's a 380 uh you know that 3.80 range again so that's the value of going with a heat pump water heater um you do have the opportunity to save a good amount of money making hot water so over on this side so this is a heat pump it's a heat pump it's going to condense right here is the drain we give you the clear hose that comes with it it has to run somewhere if you put it into a condensate pump or whatever if you don't have somewhere to drain it from a negative standpoint you can go to a condensate pump if you go to a condensate pump and you want to wire the condensate pump into the unit to give you an alarm code if there's a problem you can just cut this red wire wire that through your condensate pump circuit for your alarm and if we see that that's a problem the alarm will go off it will also shut down the heat pump and then you will be running on a standard electric water heater so you get some redundancies built in here as a heat pump electric water heater a hybrid water heater if something fouls on the heat pump side of the water heater it will automatically revert back to being an electric water heater okay so again I'll go through the the water side now we have a brass drain okay that's on on all these they have a brass drain right here this is our cold water inlet so I am currently coming into this tee which is my main I go through my shut off valve I leave my shut off valve I go into the bottom of the unit I fill this up we turn on the heat pump electric whatever is going to generate to hot water this is my exiting hot water port yes my relief valve is right there and I know I don't have it piped down to the ground that's something I still have to finish I just want to point one thing out and Brett you're going to have to get real close here if you tie into the hot water tapping here you're going to see right there on the top of the pipe there's a black Magic Marker this is a j-tube so that j-tube goes into the tank and the top of the tank is way up here so that j-tube goes in and it looks like this if that marker is at the top the j-tube is in the proper position if you get an insufficient hot water call take a look if it's piped from the side and make sure that is at the top if not when you know when they put it in there if they didn't back it up potentially you could have the j-tube downward like this you could lose eight inches of hot water within the tank itself so just keep that in mind we always want to back up that fitting when we're when we're tightening up so basically I would run this at at least 140 degrees maybe even closer to 150 depending on the application I'm going to take 140 to 150 degree water out of here it's going to come down it's going to hit the hot side of my mix valve I'm going to take a portion of cold water up this way the other portion of cold water is going into the tank I'm going to take the cold and the hot so 150 degree hot let's say 68 degree cold I'm going to mix them and I'll deliver my 120 to my faucets this will allow me to use less hot water every minute that the hot water is on because I'm mixing more cold water with it which will give me a longer run time of hot water using the heat pump side of it so that is a brief overview of a heat pump water heater this is a demo unit we have a van we can take this thing pretty much anywhere we need to uh if you're interested in a demonstration bringing this to your facility uh please reach out to us at Wells Darby and we'd be happy to accommodate and get it out in front end go through all the all the you know codes and everything that you'll see one item here that you have to remember the minute you power this unit up it will take between 7 and 10 minutes before the unit actually starts so you'll just see in the center of this controller three Brink three blinking lights it'll go blink blink blink blink blink blink and it'll do that for that seven to ten minutes while while that's taking place it's basically doing a system check and it's making sure that all of the thermistors that are going to report back to it until temperatures are out there and that they're operational and then after that seven to ten minute run of test it will go into heat pump hybrid mode uh set from the factory that will happen every time you power the unit down so just just a heads up Don't panic when it doesn't come on immediately it'll be a seven to ten minute run before that happens so that that's a brief overview I don't want to you know get long in the tooth here we appreciate uh everybody looking at our videos and um yeah we can we can actually run some water for you too if uh you know after we heat the water up I don't know if we got the whole tank warm yet but uh we have the ability to show you that whether it's a 50 a 66 or an 80 we can give you you know shower head flow rates and you can see exactly what's going on with the unit a little bit of air kicking so again this is available if uh you know you're in this heat pump Market or you want to get into the heat pump Market again the rebates make this very attractive um and uh with the government uh kind of driving this electrification uh we're here to support you in any way that we can so I'm John Russo Wells Darby thank you very much foreign

Channel: Wales Darby

Views: 16,613

Keywords: water heater, A.O. Smith, Wales Darby, Heat pump, Plumbing, training, electrification, voltex

Id: k3C5Dz9BWww

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023