A better hot water solution

[english_1969]

Does anyone have an experience with this company?

http://www.airgenerate.com/products/airtap.html

I'm not ready for solar, but this seems like a low price possibility to improving HW efficiency.

Thoughts?

 

[fcwilt]

Well it summer it would be removing heat you don't need but in the winter it's heat that you want and will have to replace with your heating system. Would it be a wash?

 

[BrettS]

Well it summer it would be removing heat you don't need but in the winter it's heat that you want and will have to replace with your heating system. Would it be a wash?

I think it depends on where you live. I'm in Central FL and my water heater is in my garage. In the summer my garage gets up to 85 or 90 during the days, so I have no lack of heat in there for it... and if it could actually cool the garage a bit that would just be an added bonus. Because the water heater is in the garage, I wouldn't need to worry about it pulling any warm air from the house when I do need to run the heater.

I'd be a bit concerned about it's recycle time... occasionally when we have guests over we'll empty the water heater during morning showers and if it takes several hours to reheat the water from scratch that would be less than ideal, however, that doesn't happen too often, so I might be able to live with it.

My water heater is less than a year old right now, so I don't think I'll be replacing it anytime soon, however, this is something I will definitely consider when it comes time to replace it. This is definitely an interesting product.

Brett

 

[BrettS]

Well... on second thought, I may be considering this now. It looks like you just purchase the heat pump unit and use it with your existing water heater. It seems like you could either leave your exising water heater running and let this suppliment it, or turn it off and just use the tank. Also, it doesn't look like it would be too much slower to recycle than a regular water heater. This product's first hour rating is 43 gallons and I looked up a standard 50G electric tank (like I have) and that unit's first hour rating is 59 gallons. So what my water heater could do in one hour would take this unit an hour and 22 minutes... I can definitely live with that, plus, when I have a lot of guests and need a lot of hot water I could turn my water heater back on and using the two together would probably allow it to recycle much quicker than either one alone.

The unit is $499, but according to their map it looks like FL has some state and utility company rebates, so I need to find out how much those would be.

Brett

 

[fcwilt]

I will be interested to see how this product does in the market place. It does seem to have possibilities.

You mentioned recycle time: We recently built a home where we knew we would be having many guests during the summer but few in the winter. We also thought we might be away a good bit during the winter. So we ended up installing a pair of "on-demand" water heaters running off of propane (no natural gas here). We have been very pleased and as long as we have propane we have all the hot water we need, so the last person up still can have a nice hot shower.

 

[drozwood90]

Well... on second thought, I may be considering this now. It looks like you just purchase the heat pump unit and use it with your existing water heater. It seems like you could either leave your exising water heater running and let this suppliment it, or turn it off and just use the tank. Also, it doesn't look like it would be too much slower to recycle than a regular water heater. This product's first hour rating is 43 gallons and I looked up a standard 50G electric tank (like I have) and that unit's first hour rating is 59 gallons. So what my water heater could do in one hour would take this unit an hour and 22 minutes... I can definitely live with that, plus, when I have a lot of guests and need a lot of hot water I could turn my water heater back on and using the two together would probably allow it to recycle much quicker than either one alone.

The unit is $499, but according to their map it looks like FL has some state and utility company rebates, so I need to find out how much those would be.

Brett

well, keep in mind, it is 7000btu into the HW tank for this unit...however that's at a Energy Factor rating of 2.2EF, unlike most HW tanks (my 40gal is 40,000BTU, however has a rating of 0.62EF...). So, do those two numbers come together to give us something? Like 24800BTU REALLY goes into my water?

Maybe that makes sense, as my 40 gal. tank is rated for first hour rating of 86.0gal. If this unit is about 42.5gal (again looked it up), then that makes sense (7000*2.11 (I looked it up on www.gamapower.org) =15400).
So:
15400/24800 = 0.62

Then:
42.5/86 = 0.4941

Then again, maybe I don't know what I am talking about!

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

Looks interesting

 

[Steve]

Has anyone ever tried one of these heat pump water heaters? There are a few other manufacturers as well, like AERS/E-Tech.

 

[JimS]

I installed a heat exchanger in the drain pipe that preheats the water going into the water heater. Very effective to increase efficiency and the amount of hot water available. I got mine a few years ago before copper prices went through the roof. Very simple concept and no moving parts. This works best if you have a basement so it can simply be installed in the vertical drain line there but some installations use pumps so the heat exchanger can be above the drain.

http://www.gfxtechnology.com/VGFX.html