this episode of the energy show is proudly sponsored by sunlight and power the bay area's leading commercial and residential solar contractor SLP has been designing and installing photovoltaic battery backup and solar thermal Solutions since 1976 help fight climate change Go Solar with sunlight and power today so you want to save the world with clean energy make money doing it confused about the economic and Technical realities of residential and commercial solar batteries heat pumps EVS want the real world scoop on new Energy Technologies not manufacture hype then tune in to the weekly energy show hosted by Barry cinnamon insights from Barry's 40 plus years in the solar and energy industry will help you understand the future ways we'll generate and consume energy and now here's [Music] Barry welcome to this week's energy show now without a doubt heat pump water heaters are the best way to heat water for your home but at the risk of getting in hot water again heat pump water heaters aren't for everyone so on this week's show we'll be talking about the advantages and disadvantages of heat pump water heaters and I won't be shy about discussing some of the real world issues that make these installations sometimes a little bit tricky all right let just start backing up all the way there's five ways to heat water for your home from basically listing these from the most efficient to the least efficient solar hot water heaters basically take thermal energy from the Sun they heat that water they're over 300% efficient they're a great way of heating water probably around the world the most popular way of heating water for homes but there's lots of parts and they basically end up being kind of expensive number two in terms of efficiency are heat pump water heaters now heat pump water heaters instead of heating up the water directly from the Sun they take thermal energy from ambient air from the air in your garage in your basement or for outdoors and they extract that energy and put it into the water as a result they're two to 300% efficient you know from technical standpoint you can really never be over 100% efficient but since you're pulling heat from another source you can get two or 300% efficiency and the heat pump water heaters are relatively easy to install but they're still a little bit more expensive because they're a little bit more complicated and unfamiliar than electric or gas hot water heaters the good thing is you pay almost nothing for electricity to run these things number three in terms of efficiency gas hot water heaters they're 70 to 80% efficient but you pay for a lot of gas it's just a fire under a pot of water and you're heating it up so there's a lot of gas that's used electric hot water heaters from a technical standpoint they're 99% efficient 99% almost you know really almost all of it of the electricity that goes into those water heaters is turned into heat very simple there's just a coil in the tank but you pay for a lot of electricity so so they end up being the most expensive way to heat water and then the last category are what are called tankless or Flash hot water heaters these are 80 to 99% efficient they use gas or electricity they're simple and small but they're still not nearly as efficient as heat pump water heaters so kind of backing up I started my energy career in the Solar industry back in the 70s I'm a big fan of solar domestic hot water I did my college thesis on a solar hot water heater and until fairly recent recently when the economics of heat pumps really started to get better even without incentives the domestic hot water heating from solar was the best way to do it solar domestic hot water was my passion for many many years but what's happened because the heat pump costs have come down so much they've gotten much more reliable and especially when you can power that heat pump water heater with photovoltaic panels on the roof the life cycle cost of these heat pump water heaters are lower than solar domestic hot water you know as I mentioned the water heating costs are ridiculously low when they're powered by rooftop solar I'm example I look at my numbers all the time on a fully loaded basis that includes the cost of the solar system my family pays about $7 a month to heat water for our home from solar it's like $5 in the summer when the garage is a little bit warmer maybe it's eight or9 in the winter when the garage is a little bit colder but it's just amazingly low so I'm happy to say that I'm still using solar to heat my water I just do that heating indirectly with a heat pump powered by photovoltaic panels instead of the solar domestic hot water panels that were my original passion all right so let's take a look at how these things work as I mentioned heat pump water heaters widely acknowledges the best way to heat domestic hot water and there's probably a thousand websites that'll explain how these things work and show you pictures and the whole thing and rather than waving my hands around I'll just do a very brief description very simple it's the same as a gas or electric tank water heater one of those big cylindrical things that sits on you know in your garage or in your basement the most popular heat pump water heaters have tanks in them that range from about 40 gallons up to 80 gallons you can get bigger tanks you may be able to get smaller tanks but these are the common models and basically the way they work is instead of having a gas burner at the bottom or electric elements inside so you know think about a gas burner think about heating a pot of water on your gas stove or think about electric elements inside they have these immersion heaters you can just put this plug-in thing goes into a pot of water and heats the water up from these electric elements the heat pump doesn't use any of that they don't use a burner they don't use electric elements they have a small heat pump which is basically a refrigeration system that works backwards little heat pump at the top so instead of a flu with hot gas going out there's just maybe a 10in section of the heat pump water heater a little higher there's a mini refrigerator in there running backwards and that little heat pump makes very hot refrigerant and this hot refrigerant you know I kind of think it's oxymoron calling something calling something a hot refrigerant but that hot refrigerant is circulated in little tubes inside the tank and that heats the water it works great so fundamentally what's happening is you've got electricity running a small compressor like a compressor in a refrigerator and that compressor is actually extracting heat from the ambient air around the heat pump and then that's using that heat to heat the water that's how you can get efficiency over 100% And since the heat pump water heater gets heat from ambient air the warmer the air the better the efficiency that's why I spend less money to heat water in the summer because my garage is warmer and it works more efficiently in the summer it's kind of cold so as far as the location we'll talk about that more in a minute but it's good to install these heat pump water heaters just plan on putting it where your existing tank water heater in if you don't have an existing tank water heater for example if you have one of those tankless heaters then it gets a little tricky we'll talk about that more in a minute but the simplest installation you know you got a tank in the garage you got a tank in the basement you have a tank in the closet as long as you can ventilate it it'll work out fine okay so that's the most common kind of system it's a tank heat pump water heater heat pumps built in at the top of the tank but they also have two-part or split system heat pump water heaters so those are very similar to split HVAC systems where you have a compressor unit that's usually installed Outdoors or you know maybe in the garage little thing that hangs on the wall and then you have an indoor tank and between those are piping for refrigerate controls and power so very very simple so you have that outdoor unit extracting heat and instead of sending the refrigerant in tubes boom right down to a tank you've got maybe 10 or 20 or 30 feet of refrigerant tubing that then goes into a tank that you may have inside the house it works really really well when there's no room for a large indoor heat pump tank you might be able to put that elsewhere and you don't have a really good place to put the compressor unit now there's also certain models that work as a supplement to existing electric hot water heater so it's kind of cool there's a unit on the market which is basically like a little microwave oven and you plug it in and then you run water pipes from your existing electric hot water heater or even your gas hot water heater into this little microwave oven size heat pump system and then basically it pulls water out from the bottom of the existing tank and then it Heats it up in the heat pump basically just little mini refrigeration system and then takes that water and puts it in at the top slowly so that you're able to get the stratification of water it works pretty well systems like this are kind of new but it's got a lot of future all right now there's an interesting side effect from a heat pump water heater especially when it's installed indoors since the heat pump water heater extracts heat from air around the unit the exhaust coming off the heat pump water heater is cool dry air basically the heat pump water he heater air conditions the space that the heat pumps in and it's disposing it's not disposing it's taking that excess heat from the ambient air and it's heating water it's kind of like you know window air conditioning unit or your air conditioner when you're air conditioning your house in the summer inside of the house is cold you have hot air coming out from the outside and that heat pump water heater is basically using that warmth to heat water so we put our heat pump water heater in our garage where our old natural gas hot water heater was and the exhaust is cold air so my wife said hey I'm going to put my excess fruits and vegetables and she's a fruit and vegetable nut under the heat pump exhaust and so there's a vent coming off the top of the heat pump and then there's this rack of vegetables and fruit and then I'm like all right I want to get in on that deal a little bit so I have a little extra wine rack underneath the heat pumping sauce so my wine stays a little bit cooler so you can kind of get some double duty out of that it's not perfect but it's pretty cool all right so that's how the systems work now let's talk about what you really need to know about a heat pump water heater for your house these are the things that you know it's really not that technical it's like how the heck do I do this okay first location of the system you have to have space for the tank as I mentioned if you're replacing an existing hot water heater just put the heat pump in the same location it almost always works as long as it's a standard tank size we've got you know One customer who had a special wide and low water heater tank and they don't make heat pump water heaters that have that exact form factor this water tank was only about 4T total height and most heat pump water heater tanks are about 5 5 and2 ft you have to make sure that the heat pump water heater tank is in a location where the ambient air is in the range of 40° Fahrenheit to 90 degrees Fahrenheit it's kind of like right in the middle if you put it outside in a Northern climate where it may get down to 10 or 20 degrees that heat up water heater is not going to work when it's really really cold and if you have it in let's say a garage in Arizona where it might get 100° it may not be operating well when it's 90° so those are just some things the design considerations that you have now the space in which the tank is located also has to be kind of big because you're circulating air around the heat pump water heater and the recommendation is a space that's about 1,000 square F feet you know it's a room 10 ft by 12et by 8 ft High most people put it in the garage or the basement where you have plenty of room that's most common you can put heat pump water heaters in a closet indoors as long as you have good ventilation in that closet so that there's plenty of of space at the bottom for air to come in and then you've got a vent at the top where the cold air can go out into the surrounding space most heat pump water heaters there's a tank and it's kind of got Electronics you just can't plug them outside your house if you want to put it outside your house and you're a nice relatively good climate you can do that but you're going to have to build an outdoor closet for it to just to protect it from the rain and the elements all right okay let's talk about the correct sizing not this isn't brain surgery basically if you have an existing 45 gallon tank or 65 gallon tank put in a heat pump water heater that's got about the same tank size if you're concerned about using up all the hot water in that tank maybe you want to go to a slightly larger size because it's less likely that you'll run out of hot water and we'll talk about that more in a second so you know that heat pump water heaters use electricity some of the hot water tanks hot water heaters the gas hot water heaters that have been installed over the last 20 years they didn't even need electricity they had a p El electric battery powered lighting system that basically lit the the gas burner without electricity pretty cool some of the older ones that I I remember having actually had to plug it in because there was an igniter but the heat pump water heaters need a dedicated electric circuit if you want a system that's going to have what's called a fast recovery rate so fast recovery means that they'll heat the water up really fast the way they do that is in addition to the heat pump at the top of the unit they have a separate electric coil inside the water when you really need fast Hot Water Production for example if you have a situation where there's a lot of people taking showers at once you may have some guests over the heat pump water heater may heat the tank up in four hours I'm just making up numbers here without this booster backup electric heat but if you have that booster backup electric heat it might be able to heat that tank up in an hour and a half the downside is you're going to use a lot more electricity and that's why most people just run it in heat pump mode but when you have guests over then you want to be able to generate hot water faster so the result is the electric circuit that you're going to need is usually a 30 amp 240 volt dedicated circuit something that the electrician's going to have to run or maybe the plumber has an electrical license they can do that but that's a circuit breaker in your panel and a separate wire that goes directly over to the heat pump water heater and that extra size circuit is going to allow you to heat water up really fast when you really need it you know when you have a lot of Gess over taking a lot of showers taking baths you know whatever now relatively new advanced technology since it's sometimes a pain in the neck to run that electric circuit I mean it could easily cost a th000 bucks, 1500 bucks from an electrician they have some heat pump water heaters that can simply be plugged in into an existing 120 volt Outlet that's enough power from that outlet to run the compressor to run the heat pump but it's not enough power to run the backup electric coil so these simpler 120 volt systems they they said they're plugin heat pumps they don't have backup electric coil so you don't have that fast recovery option they'll always take maybe three or four hours to reheat all the water in the tank and you know if you are worried about it one option is you can just put in a bigger tank and then you'll have more water but you're still going to have a relatively slow recovery time it's heating the water up kind of slowly but really inexpensively so here's a a cold reality I'd like you to go through this example rather than me but this is a cold issue that we have had just this Thanksgiving season we were prepping all day for our family turducken Feast it's kind of weird what a turducken is but that's a separate issue my wife and and two of my daughters took showers after they were done with all the cooking and I was still kind of slepping around doing stuff so I got a chance to take the last shower but they had taken showers there was a lot of dishes that were washed dishwasher was running so take a shower at 5:00 and there's only lukewarm water from her 65 gallon heat pump water heater tank I had no complaints from my daughters or my wife so they got a nice hot shower but by the time the fourth shower rolled around after washing dishes it was a little chilly not that big a deal it's only happened to me once before in a very very similar situation where the the kids were over and they were all taking showers so normally i' like to save money I always have my heat pump water heater set to operate with the heat pump only I don't use the high demand setting or the booster heating setting that would activate that separate electric coil I forgot to temporarily change that setting because it's only happened one other time in 5 years before the army of people came over our house so I got to remember next Thanksgiving next time we have a big party just set it to the high demand setting and you know maybe I'll have an extra $2 electric pill that day but I forgot to do that and if I would have done that the high demand setting would have easily heated the water up in the tank much more quickly and there would have been almost unlimited showers but I tried to save a lot of money a little bit of money anyway so my advice if you never expect a lot of showers and you have a relatively simple hot water demand you know two people take a shower in the morning or one person takes a shower in the morning one person in the evening the plug-in heat pump water heater is probably okay for you you probably save a few thousand since you get a cheaper unit and you don't need a dedicated circuit and if you go down that path you might just want to consider you know if you have an existing 45 gallon tank get a 65 gallon tank if you have a 65 maybe getting an 80 gallon tank just to make sure you've got extra hot water in case you ever need it okay talked about a bunch of the location issues and the electrical issues now let's talk about permitting hassles and we always recommend getting a local building permit for major projects that you're going to do around your house now the cost of this permit might be a few hundred dollar and what happens is you go to the city or your contractor will go to the city get this building permit and then the key thing is the important thing is the city inspector checks the work done by your plumber your installer and that's a really good thing because it improves the safety and the quality of the installation the second is that they're going to make sure that the newest code requirements are used so building codes continue to evolve you know we realize oh like here in California 30 or 40 years ago oh we better reinforce the buildings because of earthquakes they required all new buildings and even retrofits of existing buildings to be reinforced same thing happens with pluming and we'll talk about that in a sec but the other thing about the building permit it's going to cost some money but the permits required to get the incentives so if you're going to get rebates from the state rebates from the IRA you're you're going to need to get a building permit to prove that the system was installed and it was installed the right way the downside of getting that permit is it's going to cost more money not really just for the permit which is usually a few hundred bucks but it's going to cost more because you're going to have to bring your existing water heating system up to current code and so let's talk about what those upgrades are going to be and these are just the things we're experiencing here in California they apply pretty much all over the country the new or relatively recent plumbing codes for water heating they require an expansion tank so that's just a tank that handles when the water's hot and cold and you've got air going in and out of the system you need an expansion tank in addition to cold air exhaust that comes from the heat pump I also mentioned that heat pumps have a tendency to dehumidify they pull the moisture out of the air and basically you get condensates a little bit of dribbling water well your heat pump is going to need to find a way to eject that water somewhere into a well or into outside or into a drain somewhere and if your heat pump water heater is installed below grade or in a place where it's not easy to run a pipe for Gravity to dispose of that water you're going to need a little box couple hundred bucks called a condensate ejector pump popular thing and you know I asked a lot of questions about that what that was when it was an extra but most systems are going to require a condensate ejector pump there's also special safety valves over pressure valve and mixing valves that are required and when the inspector looks at your plumbing to the you know you got a brand new pump water heater it's got nice copper piping to it they're going to be careful and make sure that you're not connecting that new copper piping to Old corroded galvanized piping without some kind of transition so they're they're not going to require that you bring all your piping up the code but they're going to want to make sure that you're not going to have a problem near the heat pump water heater and then also water heaters in many cases go on a stand and they have safety straps and those are usually replaced so those are just things to keep in mind those are extras and so when we talk to our local plumber it's like yeah we can put in a water heater gas water heater electric water heater even a heat pump water heater we can do that in a day but then they got to do all this extra work and get the inspection and that usually adds a full day to the process of putting in the E pump water heater so that's something to keep in mind and by the way if you replace your existing gas water heater or your existing electric water heater with a new gas or electric water heater not that I'm advising that in some cases you can't even do that you should still get a building permit you there are contractors like to cut corners on that okay all right incentives incentives kind of change the game for heat pump water heaters not only do some jurisdictions require you to do that put in heat pump water heaters for new construction but there are so many incentives that if you play your cards right in certain locations that heat pump water heater can cost less than replacing it with a gas or an electric water heater so you know here in California pretty much all around the country there's a lot of incentives the best incentive and it applies throughout throughout the country is the 30% Energy Efficiency Home Improvement tax credit so you can get up to $2,000 back on your taxes as a credit it's free money if you put in a heat pump water heater so example very simple you're going to spend $7,000 on a heat pump water heater with all the permitting and you get a fancy unit it's got the internet capability blah blah blah you're going to get uh 30% tax credit $2,100 but the cap is $2,000 so you're going to get $2,000 back so that brings that cost to that heat on water heater down to $5,100 so that's really great there's another appealing incentive the $1,750 inflation reduction act Ira home electrification rebate that's kind of out there there are hooks with all these Ira rebates that they have maximum income caps so you have to make sure that in your area you are underneath that maximum income cap otherwise there's no point in applying for this because you're not going to be able to get it now in addition to the tax credit and the IRA rebate there's a lot of utility and state sponsored rebates here in California I mean if you add it all up you can probably get another $3,000 for your heat pump based on local utility rebates State rebates other types of rebates it's really complicated my advice right now don't drive yourself crazy trying to save $500 or $1,000 because if you chase the incentives you may find that in many cases the cost of getting the incentive in terms of the aggravation from the contractor or delay in payment is it worth the incentive but without a doubt go for the 30% Energy Efficiency home improvement credit so now let's talk about the timing of your inevitable installation of a heat pump water heater I'm saying inevitable because your hot water heater will die Department of energy says that the average lifespan of a hot water heater and I didn't really look at the breakdown between electric and gas but the average lifespan is 13 years probably about the same for heat pump water heater mine's been working flawlessly for 5 years I I don't see why it wouldn't keep working but you know you need a hot water heater when you see a puddle of water on your basement or garage floor when that happens they start to dribble slowly but it doesn't go away you know it's like that idiot light in your car once that light goes on you better kind of figure out what's going on so when you see that puddle of water on your basement or garage floor move fast if you have a water heater in your attic which sometimes homes have if you see some water dripping down got to move really fast most plumbers can replace an existing G gas or electric water heater in a couple days you can call them up they'll be there the next day they'll do a a replacement really really quick but if you say you want a heat pump water heater sometimes it might take them a little longer it's gotten so much better these heat pump water heaters are now in stock at local plumbing supply houses so that's good but if you need to run a new 240 volt electric line for the heat pump water heater these are the the deluxe units with the booster heat fast recovery so if you need to run that wire it may take another few days to get that wire run by a qualified electrician so here's my advice if your tank is old and you want a heat pump water heater install that 240 volt electric circuit now don't wait if you're doing any electrical upgrades to your house run that wire now it's a lot cheaper to run that electric wire for the heat pump water heater now if you're doing other electrical work like upgrading your electric panel or putting in solar then kind of getting an electrician to come out just to do a $1,200 job just bundle these things together you're going to save a lot of money that way if you have that EX existing dedicated 240 volt circuit when your old hot water heater dieses you can replace it quickly with a heat pump water heater and as I mentioned before there are good tax credits and rebates for these electrical upgrades if you do it with solar those electrical upgrades would also apply all right so here's my recommendation first plan now for a heat pump water heater as I said it's not if your hot water heater dies it's when if you're doing any electrical upgrades at all all run a new 240 volt circuit to where your heat pump water heater will be which is in most cases right where your existing hot water tank is when it comes to installing the system work with a plumber or electrification expert that knows how to properly size your heat pump water and by the way when you talk to a plumber you're going to have to tell the plumber what you want in many cases the plumbers kind of just I know how to do regular gas heater water heaters or I put in lots of tankless heaters don't worry Mr customer this customer those will be fine for you no you don't want that you want a heat pump water heater you don't want another gas water heater you don't want a tankless water heater which is not as efficient you want to put in a heat pump water heater so work with them once you've told them what you want to properly size the heat pump water heater not too difficult I mean there's really only two factors it's like how big is the tank and do you want to get this emergency booster heat or just get a plug in 120 volt unit and then finally work with a plumber or an electrification expert who knows the local codes and we'll install a system that's code compliant you don't want to put in a system really fast without a building permit or ignoring these codes because then when you you find out hey I want to apply for a rebate you're not going to be able to get that rebate so the codes are tricky they're there for your safety they'll add maybe1 or $2,000 maybe that's going to blow your budget I don't really know but in general you're going to have to do it sooner or later and I would recommend doing it the right way okay that's all the time we have on this week's energy show and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in and if you missed any of today's show you can always go to our website at energy show. Biz and listen to the [Music] podcast this episode of the energy show was proudly sponsored by sunlight and power the bay area's leading commercial and residential solar contractor SLP has been designing and installing photo voltaic battery backup and solar thermal Solutions since 1976 help fight climate change Go Solar with sunlight and power today
