Our transition to an electric heat pump water heater!
Part of an ongoing home electrification project
Earlier this year, my husband, Roger Hu, and I took the big step of swapping out our gas tank water heater for an electric highly-efficient heat pump water heater!
We live in a condo, so this took some planning, a little over a year actually. We had an aging gas tank water heater in a closet on the second floor, and a neighbor's story about their sudden gushing tank and subsequent remodel had us worried about how much time we had left.
Our goal was to move our current 40 gallon gas tank water heater to our single-car garage on the ground level. Whether we were going to switch to another equivalent gas tank water heater, or gas tankless, or to an electric heat pump water heater... my husband and I really couldn't agree at first. We started to get quotes from various vendors, including Home Depot, and some local businesses like Water Heater Masters. Most vendors actually tried to convince us to switch to a gas tankless. It's what they know, and it would save space for us. It would theoretically save us money on gas too... but as soon as I found out that gas tankless water heaters leak MORE methane than gas tanks, I was convinced we WERE NOT going to do gas tankless. https://www.nrdc.org/.../methane-math-gas-tankless-water...
In my journey of discovering electric heat pumps, I learned that heat pump water heater tanks can be 400% more efficient than gas tank water heaters, especially in temperate-hot weather! This is because heat pumps operate by TRANSFERRING heat, not generating heat. Also I learned that there are water heater models that can even use carbon dioxide (CO2) as a natural refrigerant! According to Project Drawdown, fixing our broken system of commonly leaking refrigerants like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in appliances like A/C and refrigerators is an important solution to our climate crisis. HFCs have a global warming potential that is thousands times worse than carbon dioxide! https://drawdown.org/solutions/refrigerant-management. Fortunately the US is cognizant as is CA and they are planning to phase HFCs out.
I was dead set on getting Sanden CO2 heat pump water heater but needed to figure out who could help us install it. https://www.eco2waterheater.com/product-info. Fortunately, Bay Area climate hero and mentor Wei-Tai Kwok wrote about his experience recently electrifying his home (https://www.sustainablelafayette.org/.../why-we-are...) and recommended EcoPerformance Builders as a contractor. We had EPB come by and examine our space around November 2021. They recommended we get the 83 gallon size. And they thought we might need a bollard... and honestly I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to find a person to help us with this. But a colleague at work who has done some construction work before said he could help us with a bollard if we needed, and this was enough to give EPB the confidence that we could go through with the project. We were set for April 2022 as a tentative date.
We nervously waited. In the meantime, our gas tank water heater started to make some weird noises. Every time we took a hot shower/bath or ran our washer or dishwasher, we could hear loud banging noises coming from the closet.
When May finally rolled around, the project took about 4 working days. EPB brought all their equipment the first day. There was I think just one day that they had to turn the water off when they were hooking everything up, but we had hot water by that evening. Once the new water heater was hooked back up, we were completely surprised at how hot and how fast the hot water came through! The inspector also gave us our building permit without the need for a bollard! Hurrah!!
I've been so glad that our PG&E gas usage has gone down to zero. Our gas water heater used to use 1.1 therms a day (which was about ~$1.40-$2.30/day). We still haven't switched out our gas furnace, so come winter, we'll likely see a rise in gas usage then. We also haven't switched out our gas range, but we use our portable induction cooktop and Instant Pot and air fryer for all our cooking. It's hard to say how much our PG&E bill has gone down because of weird summer schedules, and due to changes in behavior of doing energy intensive activities during non-peak hours, but it's definitely gone down.
Our heat pump water heater is also awesome in that we can change the hours of when it heats the water to be during non-peak hours (i.e. it starts at midnight). Before I switched the timing, it would kick in immediately after our hot shower/bath, and the compressor unit was really quiet and would feel like A/C blowing cold air out as it transferred heat from the surroundings to the water tank.
We don't have solar panels (yet?) but we opt up with MCE's Deep Green program so our electricity comes from 100% renewable sources (solar and wind).
Did I mention the tank is stainless steel? This is supposed to last much longer than the 10 years usually cited for conventional water heaters.
We were successful in getting one of the rebate checks from BayREN and are still waiting on another rebate check from the TECH Initiative.
What do you think about Lafayette implementing policy to electrifying new and existing buildings? https://www.lovelafayette.org/.../building-electrification
#climatecrisis #climateemergency #earlyadopter #homeelectrification #electrifyamerica #electrifyeverything #heatpumpwaterheater #sandenCO2 #refrigerants #MCE #deepgreen #PGE
So excited the day finally came!
Below is our garage… EPB had all their stuff there as they hooked up the new tank in the corner and the compressor just on the other side of the wall. We were so glad we didn't have to get rid of the storage shelves on top... Which is what Home Depot said we would have to do if we got the Rheem heat pump water heater.
Below is our gas usage per PG&E from April to May, mostly because of our gas tank water heater. Earlier in the year we were paying for 1.1 therms every day, but here it shows gas usage about 1.0 therms every other couple of days. In a prior home energy report, we found out that our gas water heater was accounting for about 40% of our home’s energy usage.
Below is our gas usage per PG&E from June to July. None!
Below is the 83 gallon tank in our garage.
Below is our compressor on the other side of the wall, connected to the 83 gallon tank which is in our garage. So quiet! Perfect spot in our patio.