Ambient air... my daily consumption on my reclaim has gone from 3kw/day start of October down to 2.2-2.5kw/day currently. It does jump about a "lot" with ambient air going from 15deg to 25deg. 2 showers a day & some washing up. Best thing is that even on a cloudy day with a 4.5kw solar system, its 100% free energy at its 1kw/hr consumption!

As a canadian its very interesting to see all your utilities placed on the outside of the house. Your breaker, water tank and drain pipes being exposed give me the hee·bie-jee·bies. Must be nice to stay above freezing year long :)

Another fun fact... the bigger the tank, the more efficient its heat retention (volume vs surface area). This also allows you to program the controller to not run the heat pump during certain hours (e.g. avoid high time-of-use electricity rates), and not have to worry too much about running out of hot water. I have my heat pump water heater programmed to not run between 4pm-9pm and its never been a problem for us. Our heat pump water heater uses around 4kWh/day. That's about the minimum. But I also have a hot water recirculator and the pipes are pretty long. When I run the recirculator on a timer in the morning it adds 2kWh/day for 6 total. But its better doing that than wasting water witing for the hot to get to the shower. Your 2.83kWh/day is pretty awesome. That is a number to be proud of! I mean, compare it to the solar output. Our upgraded 5kW solar system produces 30kWh/day+ during the summer and around 16kWh/day in the winter. And the water heater is using just a tiny bit of that... I'm a happy camper! -Matt

An outdoor water heater is such an unusual concept to me! We have to have all our stuff indoors because of freezing weather.

As a retired electrical/electronic engineer, I enjoy watching your knowledgeable and pragmatic engineering approach to problem solving. Well done!

400 Liters! The biggest residential tank I've seen in the US is 65 Gallons (240L), and that's "big". My husband would love to have that setup 🔥

I installed a heat pump water heater and I'm thrilled by it. I keep it on heat pump only mode and it does great. The water heater that came with the house was oil fired, and it wasted a lot of oil. Same with a gas unit, heat rises up through the flu pipe while it's off and convection cools the tank.

I am impressed by your triceps

I like the design of that. Here in the US they are a combined unit (at least the common residential units) with the compressor assembly sitting on top of the tank. I suspect the remote unit like that could be a little more efficient since you probably have a good bit more area for heat exchange. As it is, I'm using about 1/3-1/4 less power over our old resistive heater. (Varies by the temp in my garage). Still completely happy with the purchase, after the local rebate we got the unit will have paid for itself in under 2 years! Given our current electricity rates, we're paying anywhere from $.30 to $.60 USD a day for hot water. That would have been between $1-2 usd with the resistive heater. Last week we averaged 4.2kWh /day power usage on the unit, and that's with 38-45 deg F air supply temps. This past summer when it was over 90f in the garage we were down near 3 kWh /day.

In the US, the whole unit is typically installed inside so it does double duty cooling and dehumidifying the air, along with heating the water. That makes a lot of sense in the warmer southern climates. I was surprised to see yours mounted outside. This was really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

You might want to wrap additional foam insulation at the pressure relieve valve to further reduce heat loss and any other pipe leaving out from hot line that you feel heat or can see with a FLIR.

You can set the mixing valve lower without fear of using more hot water, it will just mix in more cold at the valve as opposed to your tap. The only difference is the maximum temperature of "full hot" at your tap will be lower (which is what you seem to want).

Great series of videos. Must watch for anyone considering to switch. You can't ask for more than this: an example of a system installed with costs compared over a year.

I love your engineering breakdowns. I have a Rheem 50 US gallon heat pump water heater set to 120F or 49C and your KWh usage numbers almost exactly match my KWh daily usage. There are no mixer valve requirements here. It’s located in my garage, so it reclaims the heat from my and my wife’s cars. I am jealous that you have a stainless steel tank. Here it’s all about planned obsolescence, meaning a glass lined steel tank, UG…

CO2 refrigerant mate, that's cool! (or Hot I mean!) Really says something about the climate when you have the hot water tank OUTSIDE, jeez you aussies! I think your PTC element calculation is spot on, that's more or less what I measure on our 200l hot water tank in the basement split between two apartments, so 3 adults and one child. (numbers from Norway for those playing along at home) Recently I have been looking at a hot water tank with a heat-pump installed on top from Vaillant, it uses an R290 refrigerant I think, however for the life of me I just cannot get hold of any useful data for my region. Average yearly temp here is 7 degrees Celsius, so not particularly cold, but quite an expensive investment without knowing potential savings.

OK, I'm about to start watching the video as a month ago I had installed a Reclaim heat pump and Earthworker 315litre storage. Two weeks ago we got the 6kW solar array done and set the Reclaim to mode 4 (only on between 10am and 4pm). It's been using 1kW between 10am and 11:30am-midday and so far I'm extremely happy with it. Looking forward to what you discover with your own system!

Dude; great work as always, thanks :) One point, and I know that you already know better: I would like to clarify for the benefit of any who are concerned, but not necessarily so conversant with energy, and especially within the wider political/environmental context.... Your comparisons between the actual water heating apparatus is of course absolutely correct, BECAUSE you are producing your own SOLAR derived electricity. For anyone using electrical power generated from a mix of primary energy sources, then to get a fair account of the overall energy consumed, then appropriate adjustments would needed to be included, for example, for coal fired generation:- 100 GJ (coal) in for 35 GJ (Electricity) out; along with the corresponding overall reduction in system efficiency and increase in overall environmental load (ignoring overall "embodied" energy considerations).

Depending on how good the heat pump is, if it is one with backup thermal elements you should try turning those off (its usually a configuration option) and see how well the heat pump does just by itself. Given where you live, it should work quite well. I wound up getting a SanCO2 heat pump water heater. No backup heating element. Separate outside unit and in-basement 80 gallon steel tank. Its been wonderful. This particular model is designed to heat the water up above the biological survival temperature, e.g. 155F and higher, and has a mixing valve on the output to bring it down to something reasonable for the house hot water pipes (e.g. 125F). Hence also why the tank is steel. And since there is no heating element inside the tank, it is literally just a steel tank with some valves and insulation and there isn't a whole lot that can wear out. It should last a very, very long time. So far the system has been wonderful. We have never run out of hot water. In fact, even if we use most of the tank the water never actually gets cold because the heat pump's water heating loop emits directly into the top of the tank. Takes water from the bottom and runs it through to the top. Consumption is around 4kWh/day. If I run the hot water recirculator on a timer 15 minutes a day, consumption increases to around 6kWh/day.

I guess if you are always refrigerating your home and it never really freezes then it makes sense to have your hot water outside. Where I live, 60% of the year I'm heating my house, don't have AC, and we definitely get well below freezing. If a little heat gets out of the hot water tank, it just heats the house so it isn't wasted.

I almost had a headache, until you said you got Mitsubishi!!!!

You are certainly building an excellent system in your home. Fair play to you. These videos are fascinating, seeing how your slowly improving the energy efficiency of your home. When it get to winter in 7-8 months time where you are, you should do an update in how your heat pump is working in your coldest conditions where you are. Have you say, your energy prices are so low, you do not appreciate just how low your energy prices are where you live, being in sydney where alot of your energy prices will be subsidised by your gov to attract investment there. All major cities have this advantage to live there, to draw investment and workers there. If you can, you should do a series of videos on all your energy resources in your home, and show people how energy efficient your home is now, and break it down into segments. Did you get your battery backup for your solar panels yet?

Your figures are very similar to mine after conversion. Had an on demand gas at the old house, an old off peak tank at the current house and converted this to a Rheem 320L heat pump unit. We are on a 5 kW (rated ) solar system. South Aus, near Port Wakefield. Instant reduction in our power bill. I recommend this to everyone. Our unit cost $4000 installed. I'm keeping my old tank. Going to set it up as a standby solar cell only heater for outdoor hotwater for washing the doggies.

It always amazes me when I see water products, like washing machines, and water heaters outdoors. I live in Colorado, and it will be -9 F on Thursday, for a high. Everything that can freeze is indoors.

Consider adding some insulation to the overpressure valve since it is hot losing some of your stored heat, even add more insulation to the exit hot water pipe.

As a canadian, it blows my mind that you would install this outside!

Thank you for the detailed breakdown! We're in a similar boat as the one you were in; we've only the tankless as out last gas appliance. In the whole last year, we've used 13,861 kWh of electric, and ~3600 kWh equ. of gas. The kicker is that with solar/batteries, the electricity cost $.0012/kWh, totaling $16.50, and the gas was $289 or $0.08/kWh. It's amazing to me how much more expensive gas must be in Australia. I figure our daily kWh, was 9.8 where yours with gas is 12.8. So perhaps our usage with this setup could get down to ~2.14 kWh/day (I'd optimistically figured it would be below 2). So if our electricity rate stays roughly the same, we'd pay less than a single dollar for a little under 800 kWh in water heating. That sure would beat the nearly $300 a year we're paying now! Lol

To measure cop. Turn off heater. Remove tempsensor. Flush out all old hot water. Start heatpump and log electrical energy until "cold out" reaches 60°C.

Technology Connections should be interested in this video since it’s Heat Pump.

Nice! What a coincidence, I have a Reclaim system in my garage that I’m just about to have installed! Looking forward to using my solar power directly for hot water instead of exporting it for 6c and then buying it back for 19c/kWh into my old rusting conventional system!

Measure that temperature again to see if it was not a Fluke! Ha. Arthur looks nice. I got a tempering valve on my hot water system with an electric storage heater... Mighty useful! They're not standard here in Poland, but I highly recommend them. Apart from the high-ish COP 5 claimed by Reclaim, the real deal data loooks nice and I like that you state the limitations of your methodology, and how they can affect the tests. Tank stratification very nicely explained!

He never fails to show his triceps in the thumbnail...😄

I found similar performance with my 415L heat pump in Sydney. After 6 months of investigation, I figured out the real issue, built my own controller and it now uses around 1kW/h per day. You are getting too much reheating of hot water due to your oversized tank, which is lowering the COP.

I’m a sparkie in nsw. The pcb on the heat pumps fail all the time, and generally the warranty on them is only 2-3 yrs on the board but 10yrs on the tank. I’ve ended up replacing them back to element heaters as the price doesn’t suit most people for repair/replacement boards. Hope you have better luck but you would have been better with an element heater and a day time timer

Looks good on the install of Arthur, and they did a pretty good job on insulating it. Looks pretty good, and only criticism is the airflow around that evaporator, should be a little further out, along with the AC units, to get good airflow around them, which does make a big difference to off coil pressures in the system. The R744 is a good refrigerant, though the pressures at the top end of the system are scary high, 40 bar plus, but at least a failure is just going to be noisy, and pop the TP valve for a few minutes as it vents. Should have had a measure of your hot water use, water meters are pretty cheap (funny though the last one I bought the brass was cheaper than the plastic, probably because the plastic ones are sold at a massive mark up, as they do not get stolen) and work well as baseline for water use (more data better, allowing you to see split of home water use for hot water, cold water and garden, which likely is the biggest use) and power use. But yes you will be saving money off the bat, essentially whatever the gas bill is, of which I would say most went to keeping that pilot flame lit all the time, and the gas usage would probably be overall less than the pilot flame use. As to pipe temperature drop, it is lowest at full flow, do another test with low flow, like you would use to wash your hands, and compare again with the radiated heat in the roof, easily going to be 10C at low flow, where the water has longer to lose heat in the pipe.

Oh that's interesting it's two pieces! Over here in the US we just started pushing for more efficient water heaters although they were fairly well efficient already. as nobody likes their hot water getting cold that they paid for. The units now have everything in the top foot and a half section of the water heater. They also include electric back up or/and boost. And there's a temperature range adjustment because well bathing is one temperature and sanitization and commercial kitchens or another so you have to find a setting for your liking and safety. within that range you also have to keep in mind more energy usage for higher temperatures. We have what is called a mixing valve same thing as you're calling a temper valve. It's not used very commonly as it's more normally a matter of setting the temperature on the water heater. However in places where you would need extra extra hot water and not so hot water say sharing a industrial kitchen with a bathroom or similar. It can be also used to prevent pipe freezing by circulating some of your hot water back into the cold water lines on outside wall sections of additions.

I would be very surprised if it's actually more efficient in colder weather. Basic thermodynamics says the highest COP should be at the highest ambient air temperature.

I've watched loads of your videos and I had no idea you had a second channel😂

So weird to see a hot water tank outside! Wouldn’t happen here in the Uk 😊

Am thinking a tank mounted outside here in Scotland would be a large block of ice in the winter.....LOL!

I like the idea of having it outdoors. That mitigates a good portion of the risk people here in the US face by having it in their basement or garage.

Well done, great explanation of real world asap performance, get a battery and use off-peak electricity too

This is a useful video because I am thinking about swapping out my solar hot water system for a heat pump. The solar hot water is great on sunny days when the only energy comes from the few watts consumed by the circulation pump. However on rainy days like today, it can chew power with a 2.3kw booster. I have a sensor in line with the booster thermostat about 30cm from the top of the tank. To take that from 45 to 53-degrees C took 4.75kWh (then the sun came out about gave me another 5-degrees for “free”). The tank has a thermowell about 30cm from the bottom for the solar pump sensor. When the tank was reading 53 at the top, the bottom was reading 51C. On a good sunny day the top of the tank can easily reach 73C. The water direct from the solar collector can be 100C+. However, just a few rainy days would put the heat pump in front.

I understand that in Australia there isn't a lot of need for heating, but here in Finland heat pumps of various kinds are used extensively for heating buildings and water also. The most effective ones use drill wells where heat is transferred from the soil by a circulating fluid, such as ethanol, but the initial cost is high, about $10,000-$20,000 for a single family house. A cheap alternative is a heat pump which extracts heat from outdoor air, and those are as cheap as $2,000, including installation. Their disadvantage is that efficiency falls when temperature gets cold, and they completely stop producing heat at -30..-25 Celsius.

Will it last 40 years like the gas system though. That will be the real test. 🤔 How long will it take to pay for itself vs gas?

On other countries, such as Thailand where I live part time, we use tank less water heaters. One in each bathroom. They cost about $100 each. Our oldest one is a twenty year old Electrolux. Still works great. Truth be told, we only use them on cool days and there arent many of those.

Dave, a medium sized single solar water heating pannel on the roof will give you more energy than half of the photovoltaics you've installed. In energy sources poor continental Europe photovoltaics are considered "they have more money than they know what to do with them". For europeans living in moderate climate zone with full four seasons with snow covered couple of months in the year living a house you can expect to find in their house hot water tank with 2 or 3 heat exchange coils - for solar, wood or gas burner and for a heat pump plus a direct heating element. High efficient solar heat pannels that requires pump for heat transfer fluid can heat your boiler from 5 - 8 degrees Celsius winter tap water temperature to over 30 degrees even in freezing cloudy period with short days and weeks without sun thus cut energy requirements from not free sources in half and in the summer it well produce heat more than needed.

I need one of those temper valves! I'm up in PNG and have the roof mounted solar water heater. Every few months I go up and pressure wash the dirt and junk off the panel and the next week the water is absolutely scalding!

First I grew up in a house with an 85°c hot water system, yes that's what came out of the taps. Secondly I just got a free heat pump hot water system at my business property due to a government program. Thirdly I live in the same city as you.

No Really Great Video. And A Very Very Thourough Explanation Of It. Great Dane. Thanks For The Vids.

Hi, it's not my first time I put a thumbs up on a great video. But this is the first time I turn 999 thumbs up into a 1k Just sharing the little glimpse of joy!

Amazing video and thank you for breaking it down!! Despite the economic downturn, I'm so happy I have been earning $ 60,000 returns from my $9,000 investment every 21days.🏆🏆

We're thinking of moving away from our gas hot water system and stove as well. Unfortunately, since our (newer than yours) Rheem had the bottom rust out of the tank we got a far more efficient "on demand" system as a replacement, however that was before our solar panels were installed so it's still relatively new. Downside will be that without a battery we can never have hot water production during a blackout (the only benefit of the old system) or use the stove.

I’ve got solar panels and an immersion heater for hot water. There’s a controller which uses PWM to vary the power going into the heater to match what would have been exported. This is great because it can use anything from 0 to 3kW to exactly use the right amount. There’s a late evening boost in case the sun didn’t shine enough. Wonder if the extra efficiency of a heat pump would be worth it here… also is it possible to vary the power consumed to match that being exported, like the immersion heater? Most heat pumps have inverter control now but can that be coupled to the export power?

In Europe we have solar systems too but for hot water we use vacuumed tubes with heat pipes in arrays of 10 to 30 pieces. Maybe if you account the solar panels efficiency per square meter the vacuumed tubes are more efficient. Plus in a no frost area you could use direct heating vacuumed tubes that heat the water directly in the tubes wich raises in an upper tank using no electric energy. Useful in no energy available environments.

The new plumbing standards will make a huge difference as well. The tempering valve effectively "extends" the amount of hot water you have available by mixing cold at the tank outlet so is more efficient. I'd imagine they also installed a cold water expansion valve as well which saves you from having hot water dumped out the valve (wasted energy) when the tank is heating.

I'm wondering if you were underestimating the amount of hot water you were consuming from the old gas system. The one time my gas system went out it took like under an hour to heat the whole tank from ambient to hot. So you wouldn't run out of hot water unless you all had long hot showers back to back, as it is heating the water at a reasonable rate compared to your usage. As opposed to your new system which is entirely stored hot water at the time that you are using it.

Got a 300 liter tank with a 500W heatpump on top. I have an esp8266 checking the shelly3EM power meter and if it sees more than 400W going from solar to net it switches the heatpump on. Off when solar doesent deliver of wifey is cooking or washing. Works quite well in summer and not at all in winter.

I’m a few months in on my ‘cheap’ Chinese heat pump that was $33 on the government scheme, it’s a Midea model and is working great so far.

so glad it doesnt snow where i live

The diagram @33:15 is showing lower COP at lower temperatures for both refrigants, so the efficiency in colder tasmania should be worse, not better. Perhaps they measured efficiency through a heat wave..

I see that tricep popping big man

My gas bill tells me how many TH I have used over the month. I read through the utilities website and found (TH) is Therm. Therm is apparently 100 cubic feet of natural gas. 1 Therm is also 100,000 BTU or 105,480,400 joules. I was digging into all this to try and figure out some of the math like you did as a possible comparison of different water heating choices. I then remembered this exercise is almost pointless because I not only have a gas water heater, I also have a gas furnace and a gas stove.

See you for part 3 in 5 years!

Tempering valves are awesome! Double your effective hot water buy heating the water in the tank hotter than normal and then mix down to 125 in the US. Be sure to get a spare since they do fail quicker than I thought. From experience. Mine failed closed thankfully but my wife found it not me. :(

CO2 refrigerants DO NOT work more efficiently in colder climates, but they work much better compared to other refrigerants. They key is to have the gas cooler drop below 31 deg C (critical point of CO2) as it delivers the most amount of heat /kg of refrigerant going round the compression cycle. The smaller the pressure increase at the compressor, and the pressure drop across the metering device, the less mechanical inefficiency there is and the closer to the Carnot efficiency (max theoretical efficiency possible due to thermodynamics). You would be able to increase COP efficiency by dropping the hot water temp lower. However, if electricity is cheap enough, you can store the heat at higher temperatures because the lower COPs are worth exploiting the cheap low carbon renewable energy. What we care about is lowest cost/unit thermal, not COP.

I use direct DC from PV to electric hot water heater elements. I am working on a project to divert some of the input dc from PV before it gets to the controller ( on separate battery system). Then any excess not needed to keep the batteries full will go instead to heat the water - no conversion losses by controller or inverter.

You could possibly fit a recycling pipework set up to the tank to reduce the cold spot effect at the bottom of the tank ( brings to mind Appollo 13 stirring the tanks). Also the effect of ground cold on the mains water feed will affect how much power you use to warm the tank.

Outside water heaters are common in southern California, not so much in the Midwest. Gas in the US is measured in CCF or therms. CCF is hundreds of cubic feet; therms are CCF compensated for actual energy content. You can get gas water heaters with much higher efficiency. The one in my house in Ohio was rated for ~90% IIRC. It did have some odd things to get that efficiency. The flue shot out sideways and had a blower. The thermostat was weird: it controlled the blower, not the gas. The gas was controlled by a vacuum sensor on the flue. If the blower didn't start or was blocked, the gas wouldn't turn on.

Great video, very interesting and informative. I would like to do the same, but being in a rental I can't. Out of interest I decided to calculate our annual gas consumption in kwh to see where we stood. We have gas hot water storage, instant gas hot water in the kitchen and gas hydronic heating, our total gas consumption for the 12 months ending October '22 was 21095kwh, 58kwh/day. OUCH.

Yes a water flow meter on the cold input line will have been helping a lot with efficiency calculation.

Would it be more efficient to run the heat pump at a lower temperature? Running a legionella cycle once a week?

Would be an idea to mount the evaporator unit in a garage and the tank in a hot attic space. Then you can use the free cooling of the evaporator for a large space in the house such as a garage which would help an electric car charge faster and the lower temperature of the space would make the CO2 unit more efficient. Might not be practical but would maximize efficiency.

14:15 You could directly compare the consumptions based simply on the bills and the price per unit of energy consumed (assuming the two systems are set at the same temperature). For the comparison to work though, you have to assume equal amount of cold water going in and to determine that you would need a flow meter on the inlet (as pointed out at 29:15). The bills might be higher than expected with the new system due to increased consumption. It's very easy for the consumer to assume that just because the new system is more economical on energy, then it will be fine to consume a little more hot water - but in practice it might prove hard to judge exactly when "a little more" becomes "a little too much".

Too hot of water, yes, on my boat, we use waste heat form engines to heat the water. However that temp goes to about 78C, so it keeps it pretty hot! With only 11 gallons of hot water, being that hot, it limits usage pretty good and allows much longer use of the water before the need to run the generator to use the electric side. The hot water will remain hot for days. Funny seeing a "split" system, as our heat pump systems in the US are all in one units with the heat pump unit sitting on top of the tank.

Hi Mate, I think you'll find that if you used the full 400lt every day, your relative COP figures will be better still, much closer if not better than 5. This is because it takes about the same kWh input to heat from 20 to 45 degrees, as it does to heat the remaining 15 degrees to 60. This is due to the greater temp differential when heating at the lower temps, meaning you get better relative COP figures thrifty the first half of the heating cycle. This has an impact when factoring the volume. If you try it for a week, empty or the hot water prior to the daily heating cycle, so you're heating the full tank, not just 170lt, and redo your measurements and COP calculations, you'll find better relative efficiently and better overall COP when heating a larger volume of water.

Another way you can Add Efficiency Is Burying A Coil Of The Cold Water Pipe 10 feet underground And That Would HEAT The incoming cold water up 20 to 30 points

Err Dave, not sure where you're getting this weird idea that a heat pump is more efficient at lower ambient temps but you're dead wrong, even while throwing the COP diagram on screen which exactly shows that. The lower the difference between output and ambient temp, the less energy needs to be "pumped" in to reach the desired output temp. That's why it is important to keep the difference at a minimum either by reducing the output temp (or increasing it in case of cooling) and placing the radiator either near a heat source (for heating) or in a cold spot (for cooling).

You guys have some crazy good water down in Australia if that's only the second water heater your house has ever had. I don't know of too many places here in the US where water heaters can last that long. My dad wants to replace his gas water heater with a heat pump style as well. His water heater and furnace are in the same closet. He'll be able to use the Water heater to augment the Central Air conditioning in the summer.

If you don't need 63°C turn it down to 50°C as you know and like your hot water You want to turn your mixing valve as low as possible because you mix the hot water with cold anyway to shower and whatnot. So better have a already not so hot (and not insulated!) pipe going thru your house (and loose less heat) then mixing it at the destination. You can also run the whole Tank cooler (if your heatpumnp controller supports that) Saves you energy in booth ways as the tank looses less and the heatpump will have a better COP Also you could set this thing up the way that it heats to 63°C only with excess solar power and drops down to 50°C at night (which might also get you through the night without drawing anything from the grid)

4:26 Sure there is loss of heat from the exposed pipes. It's just that the boiler is hot enough that the pipe is maintained at the same temperature. If it is a particularly hot day, then the pipes through the roof might not lose too much heat but in winter it will be a different story.

Interesting, our heatpump hot water is all in one, the heatpump itself is sitting on top of the tank, it's pretty sweet, we run ours from 11-4 to make use of the higher air temp as much as the solar

Realy liked it, wondering why this is not a standard for residential house, or apartments. It could even reduce cost of heat pumps if they are produced in huge numbers.

420l is just enormous. The largest boiler I've ever seen was around 200l for a typical family with kids taking a bath every day.

tempering valves are always on the outside .... Make sure the tank water temperature is at or above 55 degC .

Interesting to see the temper-valve being external. I'm used to them being built into the output of the tank so you can't bypass them.

lol. 63C = 145F. I have my water heater set to 150F, which is 65.5C. I like long, hot showers. So to make the showers last longer, I have the water set hotter. Also, the heating coil in my washing machine broke, and I can't for the life of me find a replacement, so for the time being, I just have the water heater output hotter water. Seems to work pretty well. We've never burned ourselves with the hot water, and even our 9 year old just knows to not turn the water all the way to hot, and then put his hand or body under it. It seems to be fairly common around here, to just test how hot the water is with your finger, or touch the faucet, to get an idea of how hot it is. The fear of being burned has never been a worry. If I could raise the temp even higher, I totally would. The hotter the water, the less of it you need to mix with cold water to reach a desired temperature, making the hot water last longer. oh, and electricity ( and gas, even though our water heater is electric ) is really cheap in my area. Midwest Ohio has some decently low rates for power and gas. So having the water heater get to 150F ( 65.5C ) isn't a huge concern.

I just bought the Rheem/Solarhart equivalent, keen to see how the first bill comes out!

9:58 "you don't want it too low because then you're using too much hot water to get the temperature that you want" Huh? The amount of water taken from the tank remains the same, the only difference is you mix in more cold water at that point (the standard thermostatic mixing valve) instead of at the tap. For highest efficiency set the temperature as low as possible while still able to get the temperature that you want and without any in-house thermostatic mixing valves/taps start to oscillate.

Interesting. (I had a electrically lit tankless gas setup at my other place) Tanked gas water heaters are unheard of here (in South Africa) That pilot flame might be using quite a bit of gas.... (moving to gas / solar water heating is quite common here with the unreliable grid power of for reducing the battery / inverter requirements for those with solar setups) AFAIK, it is recommended that the (mostly resistive electric) tanked water heater temperature is set to 60°C for efficiency and safety. (50°C minimum seems acceptable) (Many people set it hotter (up to 80°C) to allow for more hot water to be used(when mixed with cold, e.g. for showers)) (the tanks are often 150 - 200 l) (I'm not a huge fan of heat pump systems, mainly due to the sellers / manufacturers doing dodgy marketing - like comparing against undersized solar systems) (they are certainly better than resistive, and with solar power they might make sense... Fossil fuels in when using grid power would be interesting to compare with gas)

I bet these work a treat in Oz

The motive principal of the mixing valve is how car/automotive coolant thermostats work.

The heat pump produces cold as by product of heating the water right? Could you use it to cool the house in the summer?

Why didn’t you install an air handling unit inside your house to capture the refrigerant charge of state by recording heat from inside house to cool inside and put the heat into the water tank?

Here in SoCal you will find many hot water heater located within an exterior metal locker.

I'd be interested to know how many kWH are needed to keep the water hot all the time if NO household hot water is being used (such as when on vacation); that is, what is the cost of the losses due to the imperfection in insulation and such. (I'd imagine that by using only about half or less of the hot water capacity per day, since the heat loss per day occurs on ALL the water, but in the calculations, all that heat loss might be attributed to the hot water that is actually used (depending on the calculations used), that would unfairly hurt the efficiency calculation...?

What is the average price per kWh in Australia these days? Are you affected by all of sky high energy prices in Europe or is it still normal? In Norway we used to pay less than 5 cents per kWh for the last 20 years but now the prices are sky rocking. .30 Euro today and rising, estimated to reach 2 Euro per kWh maximum during december and january...

That's weird. When my Reclaim was installed they used the GPO for the controller but insisted on hard-wiring the heat pump itself. I wonder if its a NSW/QLD thing

That's a great video, I have a 11.47kwh Solar system , I'm also getting a 16kw Sungrow battery soon. I'm thinking of getting one as well, for my house so everything can run on green energy. I like to know after 1 year of usage, would you still recommend. Thank you so much.

It's common practice in colder climates to insulate your water pipes and older water heaters. This is something that Texas found out the hard way, it should be standard although usually they have the opposite problem getting warm water instead of cold water. Either way pipes can freeze and it does damage. It's also common in warmer climates of the US to have outside water heaters for some strange reason where they're more subject to environmental issues and degradation. Although they lose less heat into the cold air condition environment with them outside in the hot environment so each your own.

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