Heat Pump Hot Water Heaters

[stevet]

While we all love things vintage, I am sure that there are many of us who also embrace new technolgy as it comes to the fore.

I have seen a few of the new Heat Pump Electric Hot Water heaters for sale at Lowe's and Home Depot and while the prices have already started to come down, I was just wondering what the take is on these.
It sure seems like it is a great idea, despite the initial greater cost.But they not only claim to save money and double the efficiency of a standard heater there is the added benefit of possibly cooling down and dehumidifying, at least a bit, the spaces our water heaters take up like a hot garages in the Sun Belt states, or a cool, yet damp basement in other parts of the country.

Are these units transplants from other parts of the world that always seem ahead of the US in technology and energy savings or are they unique to the North American markets?

Does anyone here have any experience with them and the real world power savings to be had? How about reliability and such?

 

[supersurgilator]

Don't have any experience with them, but while researching them I thought it was unusual that they claim the heat pump may run for up to 2 hours to regenerate after a shower. But since it uses less energy it will still cost less to run. They say that they also sound like a dehumidifer when running.

 

[dj-gabriele]

Here in Italy heat-pump water heaters have been on the market for a few years now and went "mainstream" one/two years ago (according to my own experience), especially in households that don't have piped gas (which is the most economic source yet). A 150 litres tank with a heat pump of around 500 W will indeed take around 3 hours to fully recover to 55°C from 20°C. Unless one uses also electric supplemental heating that halves the recovery time but also the savings.
But also mind that there aren't hot fill appliances over there, unless one chooses special made stuff to hook up to solar collectors or geothermal heating, so the hot water request is lower.

 

[combo52]

HEAT -PUMP WATER HEATER

I bought the Rheem HPWH from Home Depot for my partner this past X-mass and we finally got around to installing it about three weeks ago. He still had the original builder supplied 50 gallon single 4500 watt element WH and had never had a problem with it. We have well water that is 55-60 degrees all year long and he has always kept the water temperature on the low side of 120 degrees.

 

So far it has worked great as you can imagine I have been keeping a close eye on it and my biggest disappointment is that it doesn't seem to run much at all. We don't use much hot water except in the shower where we have a large walk in shower that will easily accommodate four people and has three unrestricted shower heads. There have been times where the two of us can pretty well wipe out the old 50 gallon WH capacity during one shower. Other than that he has a WP Duet washer that does 4-6 loads per week { always set on hot ] and the builder 1990 basic WP DW that uses around 10 gallons per load and is run about four times per week.

 

I would highly recommend a HPWH to anyone that does not have natural gas. This is not new technology by 1980 there were several brands of these on the market and when CRs tested them around 1982 they concluded that they made more sense than solar water heating for most homes with out NG service.

 

When you consider how little interest saving accounts and other investments are paying now almost everybody that has an electric WH should go out and buy one of these, with the various rebates and tax credits the payback can be less than 5 years for most people. This type of purchase can help your finical future to say nothing of the future of our planet. 

 

[supersuds]

The GE heat pump water heaters are made at Appliance Park, Louisville, Kentucky.

http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2009/05/25/daily48.html

 

[combo52]

HEAT -PUMP WATER HEATER

Thats good news that GE will start making HPWH in the US, the current GE models are made in China. That is one of the reasons that I bought the Rheem unit as its final assembly is in Mexico also the Rheem unit is just a little more efficient. I do have friends that had the GE installed last year and they are very pleased with it.

 

[cornutt]

combo52, if you don't mind me asking, what did you pay for that?